This unit develops students' abilities to make evidence-based claims about literary technique through activities based on a close reading of Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death" and Robert Frost's "Home Burial."
This unit develops students' abilities to make evidence-based claims about literary technique through activities based on a close reading of Louise Erdrich's "The Red Convertible" and Tim O'Brien's "On the Rainy River."
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet presents "star-cross'd" lovers whose plight has become the subject of many of today's novels, plays, films, and television dramas. Explore with your students the techniques that Shakespeare uses to capture the magic of the couple's first meeting and to make that meeting so memorable. This lesson plan complements the study of plot and characterization in Romeo and Juliet in its focus on lyrical form and convention that heighten the impact of the action on the stage.
Students identify selected quotes from literary works studied in class. After a brief discussion of what all of the quotes have in common, students will determine that each quote foreshadows an important, upcoming plot development. The class will then examine an essay prompt on foreshadowing, vote on the literary work to be used in planning a response to the prompt, and, as a teacher-led, whole-class activity, come up with a thesis and main point outline for the essay.
This lesson introduces students to Orwell's Animal Farm. They will summarize and reflect on reading and connect the novel to life in a meaningful way.
Sheila Kosoff joins fellow teachers, Adam Grumbach, Avram Barlowe and Terry Weber to reflect upon class discussion around a given text and how questioning facilitates a rigorous discussion. Avram talks about the importance of asking open-ended questions that invite multiple interpretations. Terry adds that effective questions sometimes allow students to explore the meaning of different words and notes that Sheila's comments encourage students to consider these multiple meanings. The group discusses how they determine whether or not they let students discover things themselves or draw their attention to specific ideas and consider how effective questioning helps students develop papers because they are better able to engage with the text. Out of this discussion, three components of effective questions are identified: askiing open-ended questions, inviting different interpretations and using questions to focus the debate.
Students at Urban Academy High School share how they feel respected and valued at school. Sheila Kosoff, English teacher, talks about how she uses the inquiry approach to foster this culture of respect in which student voice is valued. Students are shown discussing Nabokay's Lolita. Sheila asks her class questions using specific passages from the text and guides the discussion by inviting student responses, making connections, and respecting different voices. Sheila says that teachers need to over-prepare when using the inquiry approach and be patient when soliciting responses from their students. As the discussion progresses, students cite evidence from the text, building arguments and expressing their opinions on the text. Sheila has students read passages from the text, reread, bring up questions, and form opinions. Sheila then talks about how she uses discussions to help prepare her students for writing.
This unit develops studentsĺäĄ_ abilities to make evidence-based claims about literary technique through activities based on a close reading of Ernest HemingwayĺäĄ_s ĺäĄ_The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.ĺäĄĺ
Students study the symbolism, setting, and characterization in Kafka's work.
Using published writers' texts and students' own writing, this unit explores emotions that are associated with the artful and deliberate use of commas, semicolons, colons, and exclamation points (end-stop marks of punctuation).
This lesson was created to follow a close reading and examination of Nathanial Hawthorne's "A Scarlet Letter". The plan uses a small group format and rotation schedule. The activities created strengthen students' understanding of an author's use of characterization, while reinforcing reading and creative writing skills.
Play a game and find out about a Nobel Prize awarded discovery or work! William Golding's first novel, "Lord of the Flies," 1954, rapidly became a world success and has remained so. It has reached tens of millions of readers. If you are one of them, you may challenge your memory with this game. If you haven't read the book, read it and come back! It's a very entertaining and exciting book about a group of young boys who are isolated on a desert island.
This lesson combines Oedipus the King and Aristotle's Poetics. Students will look at both pieces and write an argumentative essay as their assessment.
In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.
A free mini-book to prepare students for the SAT exam with lessons and questions in math, reading, and writing.
In this module, students will read, discuss, and analyze contemporary and classic texts, focusing on how complex characters develop through interactions with one another and how authors structure text to accomplish that development. There will be a strong emphasis on reading closely and responding to text dependent questions, annotating text, and developing academic vocabulary in context.
A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.9-10.RL.1, featuring Shelley's poem, "Ozymandias". The poem has a Dale-Chall reading difficulty level of 9-10, and a Flesch-Kincaid difficulty of 9.8.
This unit is centered around an anchor text that may be common among content area teachers in a high school setting. Although this unit may be incorporated into any high-school English class, it is aligned with Common Core standards for 9-10. This unit will primarily focus on informational and argumentative texts, and can be used to incorporate more informational texts (as directed by the Common Core) into English classrooms at the high school level. This unit is best suited to a collaborative model of development in which ELA and content area teachers share an anchor text (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and communicate about how to connect diverse skills to common texts and essential questions.
In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.