Imagine using narrative essays to encourage change. This multi-week unit plan does just that. After reading a series of articles from Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, class members examine the...

An extensive portfolio project encourages your kids to reflect on their personalities with multiple writing assignments. From activities on extended metaphors to writing about an important day in their lives, kids explore the way they...

Agnes Varda’s autobiographical “The Beaches of Agnes,” models for young filmmakers the cinematic self-portrait. Far from “old and plump,” Varda is a giant of filmmaking and will inspire your pupils. After watching a clip of this famous...

Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....

Which option would most children choose: One marshmallow now, or two marshmallows in 10 minutes? Learners watch the social experiment on video and discuss their observations. They then read articles and work in small groups to analyze...

Let their futures take flight! The sixth and final installment in a series of career and college readiness lesson plans pulls it all together for graduation-bound seniors. Individuals comb through their action plans and describe the...

Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...

To conclude a study of social justice and tolerance designed to prepare classes for a visit to the Museum of Tolerance, class members brainstorm a safe and peaceful world. They then write about their own vision of this world.

Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...

After completing Juliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, class members rewrite a traditional fairy tale, making three significant changes to illustrate a theme of their choosing.

POW camps in the United states? In Alabama? The German POW camp in Aliceville, Alabama is used as the focus of a study of the more than 700 camps built in the US during World War II.

Wrap up your course by asking learners to reflect and consider some of the most meaningful and important moments from the year. This document includes 15 different reflection questions, from identifying a best piece of writing or an...

Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.

What does empathy look like? Encourage your pupils to put themselves in another person's shoes with several writing and discussion activities that relate to a featured short film. Over the course of the activity, individuals collaborate...

What would you do if you got an extra day every week? Partners share some information about their routines and lives and write compositions about one another based on the information. Each partner tries to guess what the other person...

Discover the lovely story of Raimundo Arruda Sobrinho with your class. Over the course of the lesson plan, pupils practice descriptive writing, write short narratives, collaborate in small groups, watch a powerful short film about...

Ask your class to think about how song lyrics can go with a video and more with a well-sequenced lesson plan that focuses on the song "Two Fingers" by Jake Bugg. Class members work together to make predictions about the content of the...

Based on the bestselling series, this worksheet details seven habits of highly defective teens, and prompts young learners to consider their own social and emotional tendencies. What kinds of experiences do your pupils have...

Design a pictorial autobiography using the letters of the alphabet. For each letter, writers select visual images that represent life events and interests. Younger writers add words or sentences of explanation while older writers narrate...

After reading excerpts in which Buck solves a problem in Jack London's The Call of the Wild, students write their own three-paragraph animal stories imitating London's style and word choice. Teacher and student instructions are provided...

A wonderful collection of 650 writing prompts organized into categories and issues, e.g., role models, family, memories, race, gender, sexuality, social media, etc. Each prompt is linked to an article on that topic. W.9-10.10 Write...

This lesson plan focuses on prewriting and planning a personal narrative. The information can be used in all types of writing. It discusses brainstorming ideas, narrowing the focus, and developing the central idea. W.9-10.5 Writing...

You are a folklorist observing the lives and cultures of different people. You want to tell the world about their culture, beliefs, and values. You and a group of other folklorist are going to research the lives of a an ethnic group, and...

Two rubrics to assess a listener's attention during a storytelling session. The first is used to record frequency of audience reactions. The second is used to access the listener's level of comprehension.