Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...

A traditional syllabus for a traditional expository writing course that produces the traditional five paragraph essay.

Who gets to come to the United States? Examine cases of individuals seeking asylum with an informative reading passage that includes examples, statistics, and representations of public opinion regarding asylum. Groups then go on to...

Why did Vietnam POWs and their families receive more media attention than POWs in previous wars?  To answer this question, class members view artifacts, read articles, and engage in class discussion. Individuals then assume the...

Create a sense of accountability among scholars with a activity that focuses on making and keeping New Year's resolutions. Writers compose a five paragraph essay focused on three resolutions—promises to self improvement,...

Students answer assigned questions as a group, write individual essays, complete a research project, and complete a writing project.

Explore ethnicity and identity with a research and writing assignment. Class members conduct online research, looking in particular at images and carefully noting down their sources on notecards. They read about identity and compose...

Students study contributions of important people during the Great Depression. Using the internet, they research and collect information on an assigned individual. Students write an essay on the person researched.

Learning to create and maintain a budget is an important life skill. Guide individuals in the discovery of their spending habits and how to track them. They then use what they learned to create a budget and make decisions on where they...

Fourth graders research famous Americans from the Westward Movement and complete an interview. In this Westward Movement lesson, 4th graders work in pairs to research someone who was important during this time period. They prepare and...

Budding authors research a US President and persuade the National Park Service to add him to Mt. Rushmore. In addition to the persuasive essay, individuals are required to develop a visual presentation using a web-based software that...

Your parents were both in different countries. You were born in the US. Documents and application forms ask you to identify your racial or ethnic classification. Which box do you check? Class members collect documents...

A reading of Patrick Henry's "Speech in the Virginia Convention," Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" launch a discussion about the price one is willing to pay to...

Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" provides high schoolers an opportunity to engage more complex text. After a close reading of the essay and an analysis of Carnegie's argument that the rich are superior because they earn money,...

Scholars investigate and discuss the importance of values and how they can be used to break barriers. Small groups work collaboratively to examine the text and draw inferences to answer questions. A writing assignment challenges pupils...

If you were stranded on a desert island, what items would be the most important to have with you? Decide whether you'd want a five gallon can of water, a radio, shark repellent, or any other item with an activity designed to prepare kids...

Who is responsible for protecting the environment, and who should pay when it is damaged? The role of government and private industry is complicated. A role-play simulation prompts individuals to decide how to protect a fictitious town...

Today, many young people find it hard to understand why it took over 150 years for women in the United  States to get the right to vote—why there was even a need for the suffrage movement. As they read a series of primary source...

Learning how to craft a cogent argument based on a solid claim, supported with evidence and solid reasoning, is an important life skill. Teach middle schoolers about argumentative writing with a lesson asking them to analyze the claims,...

What was it like to fit into a certain class with no choice in the matter? Learners experience the caste system in a role-play activity, work individually on handouts to enhance their learning, and participate in an evaluation activity...

Students improve their essay writing skills using the subject of voting as a topic. In this writing essays lesson, students write expository essays to increase the weight of their vote in the 'Cast Your Vote Poll' for the Trans-Amazon...

Second graders write as essay describing the cooperative group drawing they made or describing the process to draw a group picture.

Students read an essay by Amber Bechtel on the situation of AIDS in South Africa. After reading, they participate in a class discussion answering questions posed by their teacher. To end the lesson, they reflect on the situation in the...

Tenth graders discover how various writers approach the themes of : alienation and solitude, living life "deliberately" and "phonies." Through reading, journaling, class discussion, and writing assignments they realize the power of the...