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 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.

This unit is designed to accompany the study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Resources encourage students to recognize a variety of propaganda techniques and to connect those techniques to media that they can find in their everyday lives. Resources also help students to understand the historical uses of propaganda by governments and political parties to influence public opinion. Resources can be used independently of the novel.

A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2, featuring Robert Frost's poem, "The Road not Taken". The poem has a Dale-Chall difficulty level of 7-8, and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 12.8.

Whether freshmen or AP seniors, students often forget to back up their statements about texts with evidence for support or to begin with the text when considering answers to literary questions.  The more we ask them to provide textual evidence in discussion, analysis activities, essays, and on tests, the more ingrained this important skill will become.  This lesson was designed for freshmen at the beginning of the year as they begin analyzing literature.  The handout and question refer specifically to the story "Poison" by Roald Dahl, but feel free to remix the lesson to work with another text, older students or nonfiction.

As you read To Kill a Mockingbird each week, you will fill out your copy of the Running Theme Log for the theme you have selected.  Once you have selected your theme, you will track and analyze it for the next several weeks, so make sure you pick a theme you are most interested in.  You must have at least 1 entry per week but will likely find that you will have 3 or more entries a week depending on the theme you selected.  There is no maximum for the number of entries you can have, only a limit of at least 1 per week. Running Theme Log: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RWgozZZVN33CYmS9-soA_8FkklBoW7Yv10UehaZX-4A/edit?usp=sharing

This module is intended for adult learners with some previous high school education who are pursuing the completion of their GED. This lesson focuses on identifying and evaluating foreshadowing, targeting the Common Core Readiness Standards for ELA/Literacy 2. Adult learners will read, analyze, and evaluate foreshadowing in multiple examples. This module involves reading, viewing, and writing components.

Students often struggle to find theme in literature--one that is not a bumper sticker, a "moral to the story," or anything that could be applied to more than one story.  Understanding what theme is, an implicit argument the author is making, is the first step.  Then it gets more complicated as they realize that there are wrong answers (the ones that don't make sense with the story), there are undeveloped answers (ones that don't get far enough past motif but are on the right track), and there are many possible correct answers that can be explained and supported with the text. This activity uses the Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate strategy in small groups to help students focus on the details of the story and how they contribute to the overall point of the story.  It can be used with any piece of literature you deem appropriate for your students.

Set in the Dominican Republic during the rule of Rafael Trujillo, In the Time of the Butterflies fictionalizes historical figures in order to dramatize the Dominican people's heroic efforts to overthrow this dictator's brutal regime. In the following activities, students will examine the actions of the characters in the novel and discuss an all encompassing definition for courage.