This lesson plan asks students to analyze two primary sources, in the form of letters, that address the issues relating to religious freedom for the newly formed United States and its relation to the nature of citizenship and equality in a religiously diverse society. Students will also analyze the 1st. Amendment and develop an argument regarding 1st amendment issues today.

Teachers and students come to school bringing a wide range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and temperaments. Get things off to the best start by asking them to respect their differences and make the most of their similarities. By sharing information on their lives and dreams, students and teachers can build community in the classroom that will support literacy instruction throughout the school year.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.

This article describes how to help students engage with nonfiction text by asking questions, identifying facts, making connections, and reflecting on the text. A template for use with students is included.

This choice board, created from Google Slides, includes 20 different eBooks featuring stories about ghosts . Share this choice board directly with students and allow them to choose the eBooks they would like to read to learn more about the topic.

Students present monologues in the "voice" of someone involved in child labor in England, respond to questions, and then discuss contemporary child laborers and compare them to the past.

Students write and record their own essays for a class blog by first completing a series of activities designed to get them thinking and writing about their experiences.

In Module 10.1, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts and explore how complex characters develop through their interactions with each other, and how these interactions develop central ideas such as parental and communal expectations, self-perception and performance, and competition and learning from mistakes.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze poems and informational texts focusing on how authors use rhetoric and word choice to develop ideas or claims about human rights. Students will also explore how the nonfiction authors develop arguments with claims, evidence, and reasoning. The texts in this module offer rich opportunities to analyze authorial engagement with the struggle for human rights and to consider how an author’s rhetorical choices advance purpose.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In Module 10.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative process for research. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 10.1 and 10.2, students explore topics that have multiple positions and perspectives by gathering and analyzing research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which will serve as the early foundation of what will ultimately become a written research-based argument paper that synthesizes and articulates several claims with valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. Students read and analyze sources to surface potential problem-based questions for research, and develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary and nonfiction texts focusing on how central ideas develop and interact within a text. Students also explore the impact of authors’ choices regarding how to develop and relate elements within a text.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this 12th grade Extension Module, students can go deeper into analyzing arguments, as they outline, analyze, and evaluate the claims that Michelle Alexander makes in|The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, paying attention to her use of rhetoric to convey her ideas. Please note that this 12th grade Extension Module is an extra module that has been developed as part of the 12th grade ELA modules; grades 9-11 do not have additional or extension modules. A full year of curriculum is available for 12th grade through modules 1-4.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In Module 12.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative research process that serves as the basis of a culminating research-based argument paper. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 12.1 and 12.2, students use a seed text to surface and explore issues that lend themselves to multiple positions and perspectives. Module 12.3 fosters students’ independent learning by decreasing scaffolds in key research lessons as students gather and analyze research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which serves as the early foundation of what will ultimately become their research-based argument paper.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students will use literacy skills to build expertise—using reading, writing, listening, speaking, and collaborative skills to build and share deep knowledge about a topic. This focus on research intentionally builds on Module 1, in which students explored the superpowers of reading. Specifically, students will seek evidence of culture, which can be thought of as the story of a group of people constructed through the generations; it can be evidenced through ancient and modern-day customs and traditions. The module will begin with a class study of the culture of Japan: Students will read Magic Tree House: Dragon of the Red Dawn, a book set in ancient Japan, paired with Exploring Countries: Japan, an informational text about modern Japan.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Module 1A focuses on building community by making connections between visual imagery, oral accounts, poetry and written texts of various cultures with a focus on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture. Students will determine a central idea and demonstrate how gathering information from a variety of sources can help us understand a central idea more fully.| Module 1 also reinforces reading fluency, close text analysis, explanatory paragraph writing, and presenting to peers. The module reinforces the fact that Native Americans—specifically the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse) —were early inhabitants of the New York region and state, and continue to contribute to the region’s history.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this eight-week module, students explore animal defense mechanisms. They build proficiency in writing an informative piece, examining the defense mechanisms of one specific animal about which they build expertise. Students also build proficiency in writing a narrative piece about this animal. In Unit 1, students build background knowledge on general animal defenses through close readings of several informational texts. Students will read closely to practice drawing inferences as they begin their research and use a science journal to make observations and synthesize information. Students will continue to use the science journal, using the millipede as a whole class model. They begin to research an expert animal in preparation to write about this animal in Units 2 and 3, again using the science journal. In Unit 2, students will continue to build expertise about their animal and its defense mechanisms, writing the first part of the final performance task—an informative piece describing their animal, the threats to its survival, and how it is equipped to deal with them. With their new knowledge about animal defenses from Unit 1, students will read informational texts closely, using the same science journal to synthesize information about their animal. Unit 3 allows students to apply their research from Units 1 and 2 to write a narrative piece about their animal that incorporates their research. This narrative will take the format of a choose-your-own-adventure. For their performance task, students will plan, draft, and revise the introduction and one choice ending of the narrative with the support of both peer and teacher feedback. The second choice ending will be planned, written, and revised on-demand for the end of unit assessment.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Download the full Grade 4 ELA Module 3B as a zip folder of PDF files. Each module, unit, and lesson file will appear separately within the folder.

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In this module, students will read, write, and speak about the topic of voting rights and responsibilities. In the first two units, students will read informational texts that focus on the women’s suffrage movement and the leadership of New Yorker Susan B. Anthony. Specifically, they will read firsthand and secondhand accounts of her arrest and trial for voting in a time when women were outlawed from doing so. Students then read The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach, a historical fiction novel set in the weeks leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment. They will continue to examine the idea of leaders of change and explore the theme “making a difference” by collecting evidence on how selected characters make a difference for others. After completing the novel, students will analyze this theme in selected passages of the novel and write an essay

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In this eight-week module, students learn about new or improved technologies that have been developed to meet societal needs and how those inventions have changed people’s lives. They conduct authentic research to build their own knowledge and teach others through writing. In Unit 1, students read the graphic novel Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Donald B. Lemke as well as several informational articles about inventions that have been developed to meet people’s needs. Students learn about and analyze structures and visual elements authors use to convey complex ideas. Then, they will write a short opinion paragraph about which of the inventions they learned about has been most important to people and why. In Unit 2, students will read The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth by Kathleen Krull, focusing on how the television was invented to meet societal needs.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students explore how native Inuit and other people of Canada have used the natural resources available to meet their needs. In Unit 1, students read The Inuit Thought of It: Amazing Arctic Innovations, by Alootook Ipellie with David MacDonald, to learn about how the native Inuit people of Canada used natural resources in the Arctic to adapt and meet the needs of their community hundreds of years ago. In Unit 2, students read and view a variety of informational texts and media, including graphs, charts, and maps, to examine how the resources available in Canada today are used to develop products that meet the needs and wants of people in Canada and throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .