Curated OER
Finding Excellent Nonfiction in Long-form Journalism
How to find engaging, rigorous nonfiction texts through long-form journalism.
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Chiaroscuro Apple
I absolutely love this idea. Kids explore the chiaroscuro technique as they draw, then bite, then write about an apple. They discuss chiaroscuro, depth, shade, perspective, and texture. Then they draw their apples, write a descriptive...
Odell Education
Making Evidence-Based Claims: Grade 8
American women have been working toward equal rights since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence. Focused on the words and actions of Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, and Venus Williams, a language arts lesson takes eighth...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce’s short story, is used to model how structural moves, the decisions an author makes about setting, point of view, time order, etc., can be examined to reveal an author’s purpose. Groups...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1: Unit 3, Lesson 12
Marc Chagall's painting Romeo and Juliet and Baz Lurhmann's film of the same scene in Romeo + Juliet allow class members to analyze how artists consider the same subject in different media.
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 3, Lesson 5
After rereading the full text of Walter Mosley's essay "True Crime," groups complete an evidence collection tool worksheet, and then class members independently draft a multi-paragraph, evidence-based response that identifies how Mosley...
Curated OER
Clean Air
High schoolers read sales promotion reports and create a sales promotion summary using information from the report. They develop a graphic organizer to outline their information for a presentation. There is an assessment checklist...
Curated OER
Children's Book
A great way to publish students' stories is by having them create a picture book using Pages. This simple instructional activity has them take a short story they have written and create a book with a title page and dedication. After they...
Curated OER
MLA Formatting Information
In this MLA formatting worksheet, students read information on proper formatting according to MLA style guidelines. Pages have no associated activities and are informational only.
Curated OER
Examining Paragraphs for Errors: Spelling
Learners review a job advertisement to find the error and then select which kind of mistake it is from a multiple choice list. To extend, have them correct the error. Note: It is a spelling mistake. Advertisement is written in British...
Curated OER
Faulty Parallelism
Practice using parallel structure. Learners correct faulty parallelism in an extensive list of sentences. The faults in each sentence are sometimes subtle, so scholars will need solid background knowledge on parallel structure to catch...
EngageNY
Polynomial, Rational, and Radical Relationships
This assessment pair goes way beyond simple graphing, factoring and solving polynomial equations, really forcing learners to investigate the math ideas behind the calculations. Short and to-the-point questions build on one another,...
Washoe County School District
Eyewitness to the Holocaust
Scholars investigate the Holocaust through the eyes of an Auschwitz survivor. They analyze and research a firsthand account of events inside the gas chambers moments before hundreds died. Using Holocaust Reading Passages and...
Curated OER
Where is the Science?: Design as an Introduction to the Scientific Method
Students work to create a design that will protect an egg from being dropped from a one story floor. They test their prototype after it is completed. They write clear instructions and link aspects of the design process to the scientific...
EngageNY
TASC Transition Curriculum: Workshop 15
What do a cheetah, Audi commercial, and air have in common? They're all topics of an engaging inquiry-based, hands-on workshop for educators about background knowledge, reading strategies, the CER model, and argumentative writing. The...
Take the challenge
Connecting with Natural/Open Spaces
Get your class outside, away from the television, and maybe even learning something about nature while they're at it. Individuals will chose an open, natural space to spend time in for several days. Each day they will complete a page in...
EngageNY
Mid-Module Assessment Task: Grade 7 Mathematics Module 3
Lesson 16 in the series of 28 is a mid-module assessment. Learners simplify expressions, write and solve equations, and write and solve inequalities. Most questions begin as word problems adding a critical thinking component to the...
Shutterfly
Shutterfly Photo Story Lesson Plan
A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book.
ReadWriteThink
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me: Identifying with a Hero
Here, young historians compare their early lives to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s. They listen to a read aloud of a story by Dr. King's sister, and then write in the provided reflective journal template. Lastly, they share their...
Minnesota Literacy Council
Grapes of Wrath and Pronouns
Many regard John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as the great American novel. The lesson plan combines a variety of strategies, including partner work, independent practice, creative writing, grammar instruction, and small group...
EngageNY
Mid-Module Assessment Task - Algebra 1 (module 4)
Performance task questions are the most difficult to write. Use this assessment so you don't have to! These questions assess factoring quadratics, modeling with quadratics, and key features of quadratic graphs. All questions require...
National History Day
Leland Linman’s War: A Look at Soldiers’ Daily Lives in World War I
Hunkering down in the trenches of World War I, Leland Linman decided to write a journal about his experiences. By reading Linman's entries in the fourth installment of an eight-part lesson series, scholars get a firsthand look at life in...
Maryland Department of Education
Our Children Can Soar
Amazing efforts of African American leaders are celebrated in a lesson on civil participation. The engaging resource focuses on primary and secondary sources to analyze the impact of African American leaders such as Ella Fitzgerald....
EngageNY
Read Expressions in Which Letters Stand for Numbers
Pencil in the resource on writing verbal phrases into your lesson plans. The 15th installment of a 36-part module has scholars write verbal phases for algebraic expressions. They complete a set of problems to solidify this skill.