Los Angeles Unified School District
Capitalism and Socialism
Capitalism, socialism, communism ... these may seem like a whole bunch of isms to your scholars. High schoolers won't confuse them after completing an informative resource. Your class masters how to use primary sources to critically...
Curated OER
Persuasive Essay
Students compose persuasive essays. In this written communication lesson, students follow the provided steps to prewrite, draft, and present persuasive essays on topics of their choosing. Rubrics and graphic organizers are provided.
Curated OER
Philanthropy in Michigan? Civil War Lesson 3: Why Should I Do Philanthropy?
Learners investigate the personal benefits a person can attain from performing philanthropic acts. They think about opposing viewpoints regarding choices, decision-making and consequences. They interview a person regarding their...
Curated OER
Class Forums: An English Language Arts Lesson for Information Resources
Tenth graders listen to a controversial piece of writing. They with opposing viewpoints face one another. After ground rules are suggested and adopted by the group, 10th graders articulate their positions in successive turns.
Curated OER
Friday Forum
Learners research controversial issues and formulate their own opinion. They defend their position with supporting data and evaluate arguments from opposing viewpoints. They present their stand both verbally and in the written form.
Curated OER
Propaganda Flyer
Fourth graders create a persuasive flyer to sway the opinion of the class on a controversial issue. They read assigned editorials representing the viewpoint that they must defend.
Curated OER
Cell Phone Radiation
Should people be more worried about cell phone radiation? Scholars read extensive background information about the issue to prepare for a class discussion or debate. As they explore the website, they learn the main arguments for and...
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Goals, Interactions and Outcomes
Learners recognize both sides of a dilemma through use of a Human Interaction Outline. For this Goals, Interactions and Outcome lesson, students create a diagram to show opposing views of fishermen and oil companies. Learners evaluate...
Foreign Policy Association
U.S. and Europe Online Lesson Plan
Class groups investigate the economic and political implications of a country's policies on genetically modified foods, craft a position paper detailing that policy, and share their findings with the class. Armed with this information,...
Curated OER
Unwind: Discussion Strategy, Chalk Talk
Readers of Neal Shusterman's young adult science fiction novel, Unwind, engage in a silent discussion, posting their responses to a series of statements about characters in the story.
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The Little Prince: Problematic Situation
Your plane has crashed in the Sahara desert. What do you do? Explore the possibilities with a role-playing activity based on Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince. In groups, kids decide whether they would walk to find help to try...
Curated OER
Argument
Learners write and discuss opposing points of view. In this argument instructional activity, students learn to understand what an argument is and they get to argue one side of a disagreement. An alternative written assignment is...
Curated OER
Constitutional Change During the Progressive Era
Students analyze the passage of the 16th through 19th amendments during the Progressive Era around the turn of the century. Using research skills, they write papers and create portfolios supporting and opposing the adoption of each...
New York City Department of Education
What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue: How Did Jazz Influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...
Curated OER
A Year in Review: The Memoir
If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...
Curated OER
What's My Point: Persuasive Writing
Why do readers need to know an author’s purpose? How do you figure out what that purpose is? Guide your pupils through a series of activities that show them how to identify various techniques and structures used in persuasive writing....
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.1
Focus on writing argument essays with your high schoolers. The lesson suggested here focuses on The Jungle, by Sinclair Lewis; however, the idea could be adapted for other texts. Check out the quick quiz provided at the end of the...
Curated OER
Whose History Is It Anyway? Patterns in History
Read and examine primary source material in order to analyze, synthesize, and debate information about the Great Depression. Critical analysts research various source materials related to the Great Depression. They work in teams to...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.4
Study allusions with a research and presentation project. Pupils are assigned a specific allusion, the phoenix for example. They research the origins, compose a summary, explain the concept, and explore this allusion within various...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.2
One way to get your class to evaluate and synthesize multiple multimedia sources is through a research project. The idea here is that class members will watch videos and listen to scientific debates in order to create a casebook about...
Curated OER
Four Corners Debate
Should the student population wear uniforms to school? Pupils express whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with a controversial statement, moving to a designated corner of the room to indicate their stance....
Curated OER
Inquiring Minds: News and Philanthropy
Students study newspaper articles and rewrite events from literature into news stories about kindness. In this news article lesson, students read sentences from newspaper articles and identify the purpose of the article. Students...
Curated OER
Change the Face of History
Students create and write a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story as they investigate the Revolutionary War. They choose a historical figure who played a key role in the war who meets other influential figures and has the opportunity to...
Curated OER
Propaganda
How does word choice affect the reading of a text? Compare two headlines that were written about the same event. Is one biased? Discuss how word choice often reveals the author's feelings about a topic. Then look at different techniques...