Test your pupils' reasoning skills with several activities and a quick mystery to solve. Learners watch and analyze a few video clips that demonstrate reasoning in action, practice deduction with an interactive and collaborative...

Celebrate April's National Poetry Month or enrich a poetry unit with a wealth of language arts material. Class members develop an oral interpretation of a poem and/or develop a podcast interview with a poet. 

Engage in an activity that focuses on the concepts of formal and informal language use. Middle and high schoolers compare and contrast each style by using a Venn diagram that includes some examples. They read and hear a passage of lyrics...

It's all well and good when you're asked to identify a speaker's tone using his or her body language, facial expression, and pitch and emphasis. Identifying the tone of a written passage is another challenge entirely. Check out an...

The beauty in this resource is the lengthy list of highly charged, controversial-issue research topics. Categories include issues of race, politics, law, environment, education, athletics, gender, and technology. After selecting a topic,...

Tone is a tough topic to teach to teenagers. But never, fear, help is here in the form of a unit plan that takes advantage of their interest in music to set the stage for a series of activities that lead them to understand how setting,...

What is the best way to compare and contrast viewpoints on the same topic? A persuasive writing unit plan addresses targeted skills, vocabulary, instructional strategies, and suggested resources that would be perfect for developing writers.

"What are feelings?" and "Why are feelings important to understand?" are the essential questions of a lesson that boosts self-awareness. Scholars discuss the four basic emotions—happy, sad, scared, and mad—in preparation...

"It was a dark and stormy night. Perfect for making Christmas cookies." Distinguishing between the mood of a piece and the tone can be tricky, but with the help of this presentation viewers quickly see and are able to identify the...

Tenth graders define the term slang, explaining its various social, historical, and racial contexts, so as to articulate when it can be appropriately used as a means of effective communication. They use their own personal slang lexicon,...

What is the difference between using tú or usted? This worksheet provides a thorough, clear explanation, and there's an opportunity to practice. The exercise lists different people and asks the learner to identify whether...

Using everything they have learned about writing paragraphs over the past few lessons of the unit, class members compose an informative paragraph independently. This is an authentic assessment of their ability, since learners have...

After re-viewing a documentary segment on the restoration of Santa Cruz Island,, individuals craft an essay in which they compare the views of the various stake holders featured in the video and identify the point of view they find...

Help your young writers recognize the importance of composing formal letters. Middle schoolers read letters written by Thomas Jefferson and analyze the components that make it a formal letter.  They will then compose their own...

Here's a resource that provides debaters with the background information and worksheets they will need when planning a policy debate. Templates and sentence frames, as well as a rationale for using debates in the classroom, are...

It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...

Explication may sound like a fancy word, but it's just a fancy way to say analysis. Using a handout on poetry explications, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers learn how to break down and analyze a poem. The...

Ease into informational text with the lesson suggested here. Part of a unit series, the lesson draws from previous lessons and acts as a natural moment to add in informational text. Class members read one section of My Librarian is a...

What is the difference between formal and informal letter writing? Who gets a formal letter? What about an informal letter? This reference page presents different introductions and phrases you might see in each type of letter, and then...

Letters of recommendation play a key role in the college admissions process. A handout on the topic, part of a series on specific writing assignments, helps applicants through the process of choosing recommenders and requesting a letter....

Class members examine examples that model how to develop and maintain a formal style and an objective tone in informative/explanatory writing. They also engage in a peer review activity and revise their work based on the feedback.

How do learners use textual evidence from a close reading to write a well-developed essay? Scholars try it by completing a mid-unit assessment based on their analysis of the first 15 paragraphs from "A Genetics of Justice" by Julia...

Spend some time considering the functions and types of language such as vernacular, standard, and pidgin. This lengthy presentation would benefit a college-level linguistics course with its accurate descriptions and plenty of examples....