Students form literature circles, read "Esperanza Rising" or "Becoming Naomi Leon" by Pam MuĐoz Ryan, use a Critical Thinking Map to discuss social issues, and use a class wiki.
This lesson extends over several class periods. Students analyze the claim, grounds, warrants, qualifiers and counterclaims in three articles about the American Dream. Students conduct research and find two additional articles about the American Dream. Students then analyze the argument in those articles. Finally, students write their own argument essay about the current state of the American Dream.
Students read three short stories about women; discuss the development of female characters, gender differences, and society' s expectations; and write scripts in which the characters discuss their similarities and differences.
Students create brochures on the same topic as another piece of writing they have done, highlighting how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers.
Students examine books, selected from the American Library Association Challenged/Banned Books list, and write persuasive pieces expressing their views about what should be done with the books at their school.
In this unit, students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school's history.
Students explore the connotations of the colors associated with the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the theory that explains the position of Earth's continents was established and later modified, and gain important insights into how science and the scientific community operate.
This lesson takes advantage of students' interest in music and audio sharing. Students investigate multiple perspectives in the music downloading debate and develop a persuasive argument for a classroom debate.
Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.
Students explore the genre of posters, review informational writing and visual design, and then design poster presentations to share in class or at a school-wide fair.
Using "The Grapes of Wrath" as a backdrop, students conduct research on issues that the novel addresses, publishing their findings in a multigenre museum exhibit.
In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students examine energy forms in moving objects and discover how changes from one form to another move cars through a roller coaster ride.
Using excerpts from the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, comics, and songs from different musical genres, students examine the characteristics of transcendentalism.
Students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period.
In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students explore brain injuries called concussions: what they are, how they occur, the challenges in diagnosing them, and ways to protect yourself from them.
In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn about the unique environment of southern Florida's Everglades and gain insights into the interrelatedness of living things, nonliving things, and climate.
In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the forces of gravity and air resistance affect the motion of falling objects.
Students will create a beginning resume that represents their current work experience and demonstrates their knowledge of rhetorical situations for professional writing.
Designed to explore the hero and the heroic in literature, this unit asks students to discuss their ideas of heroism and analyze heroes in literature.