This resource from CommonLit offers this lesson based on the work of American author O. Henry. To support student's understanding of the themes in the story, teachers can access guiding questions, assessment questions and discussion prompts as well as texts with similar themes literary devices, topics and writing style.

The Girl Who Thought In Pictures by Julia Finley Mosca, illustrated by Daniel Rieley | Read Aloud for Kids | The Reading BoothBook Description (from the auth...
Excellent resource to introduce autism, poetry, and perseverance.

CommonLit provides this resource which features Caribbean American writer Jamaica Kincaid well-known for her essays, stories, and novels. Her writing often includes personal portrayals of family relationships set in her native Antigua. In "Girl," a mother lectures her daughter on society's expectations for women. To support student's understanding of the themes in the story, teachers can access guiding questions, assessment questions and discussion prompts as well as texts with similar themes literary devices, topics and writing style. This text can be paired with "Math Isn't Just for Boys," by Rachel Crowell.

A teacher discusses the importance of giving students a choice over what to write about, what to write with, and where to sit when they are writing. When given these choices, students are able to write more, they enjoy it more, and the quality of their writing improves.

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.

The Glyfada Method is a formula to help students write essays by focusing on the most difficult part of an assignment: getting started. This method helps the writer discover what their main points are and what they have to say about each main point.

This unit serves as a foundation for understanding the way in which the American government was formed and the way it is structured. The unit has three main sections. In the first section, students learn about the functions of government, the three main branches of government, and how the branches work together to meet the ever-changing needs of our country. In this section students will be challenged to think about how government is useful to its citizens and about the key powers of each branch. In the second section, students explore elections and how people become elected officials. Students also explore the women's suffrage movement, why women couldn't vote before 1920, and what changes brought about women's suffrage in the United States. Finally, in the third section, students read biographies of a few courageous individuals who overcame racism, sexism, and hardships to prove that they deserved a spot in government and that they would do whatever it takes to fight for and push for change. During this final section, students will be challenged to think about how the actions of others can inspire us to drive for change, especially in the current political climate.

This unit expands on the work done in units 1 and 2 to build reading skills. Students will continue to develop their skills as critical consumers of a text by annotating for main idea and details that support the main idea of a text, summarizing sections of a text, explaining the connection between ideas and concepts, interpreting information presented through different text features, and describing the structure of different paragraphs. In this unit students will also be challenged to think about how an author uses evidence and reasoning to support particular points or ideas in a text. They will also be challenged to integrate information from one text with information they learn in another text about the same topic.

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.

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.

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.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze nonfiction and dramatic texts, focusing on how the authors convey and develop central ideas concerning imbalance, disorder, tragedy, mortality, and fate.

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.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary and informational texts, focusing on how authors use word choice and rhetoric to develop ideas, and advance their points of view and purposes. The texts in this module represent varied voices, experiences, and perspectives, but are united by their shared exploration of the effects of prejudice and oppression on identity construction. Each of the module texts is a complex work with multiple central ideas and claims that complement the central ideas and claims of other texts in the module. All four module texts offer rich opportunities to analyze authorial engagement with past and present struggles against oppression, as well as how an author’s rhetoric or word choices strengthen the power and persuasiveness of the text.

In Module 11.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative process for research. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 11.1 and 12.2, 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. The research-based argument paper synthesizes and articulates several claims using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence to support the claims. Students read and analyze sources to surface potential problem-based questions for research, and develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary texts, focusing on the authors’ choices in developing and relating textual elements such as character development, point of view, and central ideas while also considering how a text’s structure conveys meaning and creates aesthetic impact. Additionally, students learn and practice narrative writing techniques as they examine the techniques of the authors whose stories students analyze in the module.|

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.

Module 12.1 includes a shared focus on text analysis and narrative writing. Students read, discuss, and analyze two nonfiction personal narratives, focusing on how the authors use structure, style, and content to craft narratives that develop complex experiences, ideas, and descriptions of individuals. Throughout the module, students learn, practice, and apply narrative writing skills to produce a complete personal essay suitable for use in the college application process.

Over the course of Module 12.2, students practice and refine their informative writing and speaking and listening skills through formative assessments, and apply these skills in the Mid-Unit and End-of-Unit Assessments as well as the Module 12.2 Performance Assessment. Module 12.2 consists of two units: 12.2.1 and 12.2.2. In 12.2.1, students first read “Ideas Live On,” a speech that Benazir Bhutto delivered in 2007. Next, students analyze the complex ideas and language in Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience.”

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.