Has society progressed to the dream Martin Luther King Jr. expressed in his famous address during the civil rights movement? Learners work with a partner to analyze one excerpt from King's "I Have A Dream" speech and find a current...

“. . .different men often see the same subject in different lights. . .” but the great orator Patrick Henry used all the skills at his command to craft a speech to convince listeners to see things as he did--that liberty was worth dying...

If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing...

A little bit complicated, but a whole lot of fun. Show your class an episode of the British television game show Just a Minute. After an explanation of the rules (no repetition, hesitation, or deviation) groups develop topics, based on...

How can word choice affect a political speech? Middle and high schoolers examine the text of the 1999 State of the Union Address, and then determine how newspaper articles and television reports describe and analyze the event. Use this...

Analyze Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous and powerful "I Have a Dream" speech as a primary source document. After reading up on rhetorical devices and working in small groups to define terms, class members identify and explain the use of...

Judge Learned Hand's "Spirit of Liberty" speech delivered during the July, 1944 "I Am an American Day" celebration is the subject of a close reading activity that models for learners how to approach a dense, difficult text.

Class members choose a current social, political, environmental, or economic problem presented in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, research this problem and a variety of suggested solutions, before...

Thirty pages of grammar activities? Your young grammarians will be well versed in the parts of speech, basic verb tenses, and much more after completing even a handful of these exercises. 

Having a diverse and well-developed vocabulary make for both good readers and good writers. The class discusses basic grammar, such as nouns, verb, and adjectives. They then view a series of pictures and work as a class to create simple...

There are some words out there that just make you say, "Wow!" Encourage your class to find and use these words in their writing to make their work more interesting and complex. This packet goes through the writing process, beginning with...

What's the difference between good and well? How about hard and hardly? Practice these words and more with two activities. Using a brief reading passage and a word bank, class members complete 11 sentences in writing and then practice...

Combat hate online by bringing it into the light. Begin by giving learners a quiz, then lead a discussion based on the issues the quiz brought up. As a class, develop strategies to confront online hate. Assign different venues to groups...

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...

Bilateral suborbital hematoma? Call an audible? 404? Have fun with “the twittering or warbling of birds,” or as 14th century French speakers would say, have fun with “jargon.” Groups match specialized jargon with plain speech, decode...

Is journalism more or less reliable with the influx of Internet sources? Learners investigate the issues of freedom of speech, journalistic ethics, and social responsibility in the age of Twitter and Facebook. After examining the...

Your young historians will square off as Loyalists dedicated to the English crown or revolutionaries fighting for a new nation in a role-play of a colonial town hall debate before the American Revolution.

What better way is there to teach about human rights than by seeing them firsthand? Introduce your class or club to the spirit of service through a myriad of service project ideas. First in a series of human rights instructional...

Where have all the activists gone? Class members compare 21st-century activism with the suffrage movement and the work of Susan B. Anthony. They begin by examining Anthony's biography and speeches to find evidence that her words and...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

The easiest way to learn how to use adjectives is through practice, practice, practice! Print out pictures of people and various objects, and have pairs attempt to describe the items together. This plan suggests providing laminated index...

Use fables as a fun way for English Language Learners to gain confidence and fluency in their reading and speaking skills. After reading a fable in class, they retell their story to a group of their peers. When this jigsaw activity is...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-activity on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how...

Where to begin? With the vocational education that provides the skills necessary to gain economic security or with a Liberal Arts education? As part of a study of leaders of the civil rights movement, class members compare and...