Students learn how to walk a mile in someone else's shoes by reading historical fiction about the Underground Railroad.
In this ELL lesson, students read an interactive recipe from Martha’s True Stories and then create their own recipe.
Students develop their reading, writing, research, and technology skills using graphic novels. As a final activity, students create their own graphic novels using comic software.
In order to show the world that the completed Brooklyn Bridge was strong enough, P.T. Barnum and his twenty-one elephants parade across to prove to everyone that the bridge is safe. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Build a bridge between two tables or chairs that will hold one elephant per student in the class. Each student designs their own “elephant” using materials in the classroom.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
Students evaluate book reviews written by other children, discussing their components and effectiveness, and write reviews of favorite books to record on video or post online.
Through forums, a video, and a slide show, students will learn how to recognize and write simple sentences, compound sentences, and complex sentence.
Elkonin boxes provide an effective method for developing students' phonemic awareness and understanding of the alphabetic principle. In this video, a teacher demonstrates using Elkonin sound boxes with a student.
Investigate the academic fraud that affected thousands of UNC students and athletes with this video and educational materials from PBS NewsHour from October 23, 2014.
This seventh grade annotated inquiry provides students with an opportunity to explore how words affect public opinion through an examination of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Students will investigate historical sources related to the novel and reactions in the North and South in order to address the compelling question, “Can words lead to war?” This query takes advantage of the mixed messages students often receive about the power of words. Students’ understanding about how words can make a difference is often grounded in discussions of words used to bully, instead of the power of words to encourage reform. This is an ANNOTATED inquiry with additional information on the questions, tasks, and sources within.
Dr. Joanna Williams discusses the importance of teaching children about narrative and informational text structure and describes some instructional tools she has used in her research with teachers.
This transcript accompanies the "Uncovering Text Structure" video with Dr. Joanna P. Williams, which can also found in eMedia.
In this blended lesson supporting literacy skills, students watch video dramatizations of Percy Julian's struggles with racism and how he refused to let it limit his possibilities in life. Students develop their literacy skills as they explore an English language arts focus on understanding character. During this process, they read informational text, learn and practice vocabulary words, and explore content through videos and interactive activities. This resource is part of the Inspiring Middle School Literacy Collection.
In this unit, students build a deeper understanding, appreciation, and respect for the wide variety of religions found in the world by reading two core texts: What Is Religion? and One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship. In today’s society, illiteracy regarding religion is widespread and fuels prejudice and bullying. The negative impacts of religious illiteracy and intolerance can be minimized by teaching religion in a non-devotional, academic perspective. Therefore, this unit challenges students to build a broader awareness and understanding of religion by exposing students to a diversity of religious views and educating students about some of the most common religions. It is important to note that this unit is not intended to promote the acceptance of one particular religion or serve as a place to practice religion. Instead, it is our goal that this unit will help students better understand the differences and similarities among the religions and cultures of their classmates, and begin to appreciate and respect differences in religion.
As readers, this unit challenges students to synthesize information across two texts to build a deeper understanding of a topic. Students will analyze how authors support points, what structures they include to emphasize key ideas, and how different texts provide different perspectives and information about similar topics.
In this unit, students explore the relationship between living things and their environment and how the environment can both positively and negatively impact a species’ ability to survive. Using the Next Generation Science Standards as a guide, students will learn about different species, what they need for survival, their life cycle, and how they have adapted for survival. Then students will be challenged to create arguments that explain why some organisms are able to survive well, some survive less well, and others can’t survive at all in certain habitats. Through this unit, along with others in the sequence, students will use the scientific information they learn to think critically about the world around them.
The Science of Living Things texts were chosen as mentor texts for this unit because the author, Bobbie Kalman, uses text features and clear language to clearly communicate complex concepts about the animal kingdom, life cycles, and animal adaptations. As readers, students will be challenged to constantly ask and answer questions about key details in the text, explicitly referring to the text to support an answer or a question. Over the course of the unit, students will also deepen their understanding of how Bobbie Kalman uses text features to not only organize information, but to help a reader learn new information and facts about a subject. Students will also work on using context clues to figure out the meaning of genre-specific vocabulary, find the main idea of a section, and explain cause and effect in relation to scientific concepts.
Determine the technical meaning of words using context clues and reference texts to develop an understanding of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
This 11-12th grade unit plan was designed for the 9th Annual Virgin Islands Literary Festival and Book Fair, April 2023. English Teacher Regina Keels, a member of the festival committee, developed the unit, executed the lessons as indicated, and demonstrated the Socratic Seminar with colleague Cynthia Santos along with their students during the festival. The unit can be be amended for other Virgin Islands political leaders and their speeches or for the speeches of political leaders globally.
This document is being shared to support teachers when designing instruction to assess the Common Core State Standards, now our VISA for ELA. It was crafted by well known Education Specialists Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins copyright 2012.
"The National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons address key reading skills and incorporate instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction. The reading lessons are examples of brief instructional routines that may be used to supplement reading interventions, programs, or curricula that are currently in place. These lessons are designed to supplement, not supplant, reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers. They do not represent an exhaustive reading curriculum. It is expected that teachers would customize these lessons to meet the needs of their target students" (Weingarten et al., 2018)
This unit seeks to develop an awareness of and the application of a Critical Race Theory lens to the reading and analysis of literature and films. Using an Inquiry based learning approach, it asks students to notice and wonder about the visual images that barrage their daily lives and the coded language they are complicit in use or acquiescence. The unit requires that students guide the inquiry by generating questions about the world as depicted in literature, seek voices not heard or ways that interests may converge. It asks students to try to make sense of their discoveries by explaining and debating positions on issues or concepts based on reflection, research and analysis. This unit seeks to empower middle and high school students to not only question the status quo but challenges them to create/recreate counternarratives reflective of utopians for the world they failed to discover in literature.
This unit will examine the genre of science fiction—specifically Afrofuturism. The genre of Afrofuturism will allow students freedom to creatively write about worlds of utopia not limited by one’s current reality and seek to modify the future by going back to alter one’s future using tools of science, mysticism, and social justice.
Folk tales and fairy tales are of interest to and part of the language arts curriculum for young learners. This lesson supports the study of this genre and the study of irregular patterns and letter-sound relationships related to decoding and spelling. After reading the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk, students discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.