This Remote Learning Plan was created by Joanna Pruitt as part of the 2020 ESU-NDE Remote Learning Plan Project. Educators worked with coaches to create Remote Learning Plans as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grades 9-12 English Language Arts students. Students will learn the research process and how to write a research paper. It is expected that this Remote Learning Plan will take students 4-5 weeks to complete.

This unit begins by asking students to consider life in Africa before colonization and the forced enslavement of Africans. Students read Omar ibn Said’s autobiography to understand the Islamic scholar’s experiences before he was captured in West Africa and after he was enslaved in America. Excerpts from Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography provide a detailed glimpse of his childhood in Africa before he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Students examine these two stories and others for evidence of resistance, liberation, connection to culture, and shared humanity as they develop a response to the question: How can we better understand America’s past and present by listening to often omitted and unheard voices from the slave trade? Working in teams, students create a podcast about an unheard story in order to start a conversation about the lasting effects of the Transatlantic slave trade and the importance of Black history in America.

Lesson OverviewThis is a close reading lesson of “Little Things Are Big” by Jesús Colón . This text was featured in a newspaper column written in the 1950s.  The essay is an introduction to the concepts of conflict in literature.Lesson FocusHow do the perceptions we have of ourselves and of others create conflicts?Student OutcomesStudents will be able to determine how the conflict in “Little Things Are Big” was influenced by outward (physical) identifiers as well as infer how the conflict may have been different if the main character would have made a different choice.  Image source: "Menschen, Offentliche..." by Tim Savage on Pexels.com.

“The Treasure of Lemon Brown” by Walter Dean MyersSee Overview attachment for lesson details.

 "Homeless," by Anna Quindlen, allows the student to understand homelessness as it affects many people on a broader scale. She emphasizes the individuality of homelessness, the fact that they not only lack possessions but have no place to keep them."The First" (also titled "Eviction") is a short poem by Lucille Clifton that provides the opportunity to compare and contrast the approach to the same issue through another genre.Final Assessment: How do Anna Quindlen and Lucille Clifton use language to convince the reader that their arguments have value? (focus on use of specific language, word choice, mood, tone, etc.)

The following unit offers multiple entry points into developing an understanding of media literacy. The unit framework and primary sources can be integrated into classrooms of grades 4-12. Each lesson has student objectives that can be accomplished within 40 minute periods over the course of several weeks. A midpoint writing assessment, whole class capstone debate, and final independentwriting assessment are included. Support materials are integrated into the lessons, and the primary source document pages can be found at the end of the unit guide.

The following unit offers multiple entry points into developing an understanding of media literacy. The unit framework and primary sources can be integrated into classrooms of grades 4-12. Each lesson has student objectives that can be accomplished within 40 minute periods over the course of several weeks. A midpoint writing assessment, whole class capstone debate, and final independent writing assessment are included. Support materials are integrated into the lessons, and the primary source document pages can be found at the end of the unit guide.

The Ways is a series of stories from Native communities around the central Great Lakes. This online educational resource for 6-12 grade students features videos and an interactive map exploring contemporary Native culture and language. The Ways supports educators in meeting the requirements of Wisconsin Act 31, seeking to expand and challenge current understanding of Native identity and communities.

Of the three branches of our government, many believe that the most important is the one directly elected by "We the People": the legislative branch, represented by the two houses of the U.S. Congress at the Capitol building. Join a group of middle schoolers on a tour of Washington, D.C. as they learn about the Constitution and what it means to be "We the People." The "We the People" videos are produced in collaboration with the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

This paper addresses the implications, for ELLs, of the new standard's requirement that students be able to read and understand complex, informationally dense texts. The authors discuss the types of supports that learners need in order to work with complex texts. They also provide a sample of what academic discourse involves, using an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. They demonstrate how English learners can be provided with strategies for accessing complex texts, such as closely examining one sentence at a time. The authors argue that instruction must go beyond vocabulary and should begin with an examination of our beliefs about language, literacy and learning.

This lesson would be used to follow up with the “What’s in the Water? Lab Activity.”

You are employees of competing Water Testing companies. You recently received a request from the municipality of Cavour to test their water for an unknown/suspected parasite that they suspect has been causing nausea and intestinal distress in their community.

Your mission after developing the Method for testing for the parasite found in the City of Cavour’s water is to submit your report for approval by the City of Cavour.

Your report and presentation will be used to determine whether Cavour accepts your bid for the contract.

You are employees of competing water testing companies. You recently received a request from the municipality of Cavour to test their water for an unknown/suspected parasite that they suspect has been causing nausea and intestinal distress in their community.

Your mission is to develop the proper Method for testing for the parasite and provide a detailed lab report.

Students will be exploring the idea of ecosystems and wildfires. They will become familiar with what an ecosystem is and how to keep them healthy. Students will also see the positive and negative effects of wildfires on ecosystems. Also how wildfires influence the local government and federal government when it comes to land management.

This lesson asks students to dig into a select scene to examine the complex and stereotype-defying character of Lady Macbeth.

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.

Engage students in the analysis of the persuasive written language of advertisements. Students will have to recognize some language techniques used in advertising, match the techniques to some printed ads and create slogans, using such techniques.Subject: English Language, Reading Foundational Skills, Writing Foundational SkillsLevel: Middle SchoolMaterial Type: Classroom ActivityRemixed by Tami Hughson, Sioux County Schools.

A Writer's Guide to Mindful Reading develops and enacts the mindful reading pedagogy described in Ellen C. Carillo's scholarly monograph Securing a Place for Reading in Composition: The Importance of Teaching for Transfer (Utah State UP). Offering a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction by focusing on reading and writing, A Writer's Guide to Mindful Reading supports students as they become more reflective, deliberate, and mindful readers and writers by working within a metacognitive framework. The reading selections, assignments, and activities in this innovative textbook move students toward this goal by providing opportunities to apply and reflect on multiple ways of reading and writing, positioning students to develop a metacognitive awareness crucial to transferring what they learn about reading and writing to other courses and contexts. Because many of the difficulties that students encounter when writing are related to the difficulties posed by reading complex texts, A Writer's Guide to Mindful Reading gives instructors the tools to help students develop a repertoire of reading strategies that will help them become stronger readers and—by extension—stronger writers.

This activity is a creative writing assignment in which first graders create poetry from scientific information about dragonflies.

This Remote Learning Plan was created by Beth Einspahr in collaboration with Eileen Barks as part of the 2020 ESU-NDE Remote Learning Plan Project. Educators worked with coaches to create Remote Learning Plans as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 5 Writing students. Students will write a variety of complete sentences and sentence types using correct grammar conventions. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standards: 5.2.1.d, e, f, h.

This course takes rhetoric as a system for designing meaning that helps us understand complex situations and ideas, enlighten and persuade others to act, and thus reshape our world. We’ll study rhetoric systematically and empirically, both analyzing how it works on us as readers, and testing how we can make informed rhetorical choices as we design our own texts.