All resources in Nebraska K - 12 ELA

Reading and Writing Arguments

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In this lesson, students read informational pieces about whether or not schools should teach cursive writing. They will evaluate the arguments presented and then choose a side of the issue. Finally, they will write their own arguments expressing their points of view.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Remix

Are Child Actors Exploited By the Film and TV Industry?

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Consider are the pros and cons of children performing for TV and in other competitive performing environments. Learning Objectives:Students will read articles with opposing view points and find main ideas and details from each text.Students will take a stance on an arguementive issue and produce a piece of writing to include evidence from the text. 

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Lesson

Author: Elizabeth Loehr

Remote Learning Plan: Author's Purpose Grade 6

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This Remote Learning Plan was created by Elizabeth Loehr in collaboration with Eileen Barks and Caryn Ziettlow 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 6 Reading students. Students will read a text to determine the author’s purpose and describe how the author’s perspective influences the text. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: LA 6.1.6.a It is expected that this Remote Learning Plan will take students 45 to complete. Here is the direct link to the Google Doc: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lpt7gJMrlenhLV8eC2E486zlJ7Dv5qI8/view?usp=sharing

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Elizabeth Loehr

Marking Up A Text

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 This plan was created by Jean Harper as part of the 2020 ESU-NDE  Learning Plan Project. Educators worked with coaches to create plans.The attached plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will read and comprehend texts that are complex.. This plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 6.1, LA 6.1.6.f, LA 6.1.6.oIt is expected that this plan will take students 60 minutes to complete.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson, Reading

Author: jean harper

My Many Colored Days: Using Metaphor to Portray Mood

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 This lesson plan was created by Jani Randall, a sixth grade teacher for Elkhorn Public Schools in Nebraska.   The attached lesson plan is designed for students in grades 5-7.  Students will define and identify metaphors.  They will then create a free verse poem using metaphors.   This lesson plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 6.1.5 CIt is expected that this lesson will take 45 minutes to complete.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Jani Randall

Using a Writer's Notebook

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This Learning Plan was created by Tessie Boudreau as part of the 2020 NDE OER Project. The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will set up and use a writer's notebook in prewriting activities. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA It is expected that this Learning Plan will take students 60-90 minutes to complete.  

Material Type: Homework/Assignment

Author: Tessie Boudreau

Understanding Homophones

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 This Lesson was created by Jani Randall, 6th grade teacher at Elkhorn Public Schools in Nebraska.  The attached lesson is designed for upper elementary or middle grades English Language Arts students. Students will learn the definition of a homophone.  They will define the different homophones and use them in a sentence. This lessonaddresses the following NDE Standard: NE 6.1.5DIt is expected that this lesson will take 45 minutes to complete.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Jani Randall

Graphic Novel/Comic Strip: Making Reading Fun

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This lesson is strictly to have students find a love for reading. Many times we just give them books and make them read them, but if we can incooperate a series that is popular and urge them to go to the library,  they might catch on that there are millions of books and they will like some of them. This would work for 5-6 grade students and is based on "The Bad Guys" series. 

Material Type: Interactive, Lesson Plan, Reading

Author: Lauren Theiler

Persuasive Writing with a Book Review

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This Learning Plan was created by Tessie Boudreau as part of the 2020 NDE OER Project. The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will understand the components of a book review and real life application.  Students will draft and publish their own book review using persuasive writing techniques. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA It is expected that this Unit Plan will take students 1-2 weeks to complete.  

Material Type: Unit of Study

Author: Tessie Boudreau

Understanding Cultural Bias in Reading

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This Learning Plan was created by Tessie Boudreau as part of the 2020 NDE OER Project. The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will read about different historical events told from various points of view to explore the multicultural perspecitves text can share based on the author's point of view.  Students will write their own opinion essay using evidence to support their claim about the debate of celebrating Christopher Columbus's discovery and heroric status in America by reading and research various text sets. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA It is expected that this Learning Plan will take students 60-90 minutes to complete.  

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Lesson

Author: Tessie Boudreau

Text Dependent Analysis - Cell Phones in Middle School

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 This lesson plan was created by Jani Randall, a sixth grade teacher at Elkhorn Public Schools in Nebraska.  The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will read the article and then answer a prompt using text evidence in paragraph form.  Students will read the text, and then support claims from the text with their writing.  This lesson plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE 6.1.6IIt is expected that this lesson will take students 60 minutes to complete.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Jani Randall

Common Core Curriculum Grade 6 ELA

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Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students' €abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of the Commencement Address Steve Jobs delivered at Stanford University on June, 2005. Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Material Type: Primary Source, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Remix

Sentence- Phrase-Word- Understanding Theme & Big Ideas

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This is an activity that includes student's own ideas and beliefs about the central ideas and important parts of the text. Students will also do a bit of writing to support their opinions. This activity gets at the heart of a text. I see this as introductory to deeper dives into theme. This lesson could be structured to be online or face to face. This is written as a class activity but an online discussion could easily be created after students had followed the protocol a few times and seen the discussion that results. This could easily work in many classrooms through high school.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Reading

Author: Julia Hatcher

Grade 7 ELA Module 2A

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In this module, students explore the issue of working conditions, both historical and modern day. As they read and discuss both literary and informational text, students analyze how people, settings, and events interact in a text and how an author develops a central claim. Students strengthen their ability to discuss specific passages from a text with a partner, write extended text-based argument and informational pieces, and conduct a short research project. At the end of the module, students will have a better understanding of how working conditions affect workers and the role that workers, the government, consumers, and businesses play in improving working conditions. The first unit focuses on Lyddie, a novel that tells the story of a young girl who goes to work in the Lowell mills, and explores the issue of working conditions in industrializing America. This unit builds students’ background knowledge about working conditions and how they affect workers, and centers on the standard RL.7.3, which is about how plot, character, and setting interact in literature. As an end of unit assessment, students write an argument essay about Lyddie’s choices regarding her participation in the protest over working conditions. The second unit moves to more recent history and considers the role that workers, the government, and consumers all play in improving working conditions. The central text in Unit 2 is a speech by César Chávez, in which he explains how the United Farm Workers empowered farmworkers. Unit 2 focuses on reading informational text, and students practice identifying central ideas in a text, analyzing how an author develops his claims, and identifying how the sections of the text combine to build those ideas. This unit intentionally builds on Odell Education’s work, and if teachers have already used the Chávez speech and lessons, an alternate text is suggested with which to teach the same informational text standards. In the End of Unit 2 Assessment, students apply their understanding of text structure to a new speech. Unit 3 focuses on the research standards (W.7.7 and W.7.8): through an investigation of working conditions in the modern day garment industry, students explore how businesses can affect working conditions, both positively and negatively. As a final performance task, students create a consumer’s guide to working conditions in the garment industry. This teenage consumer’s guide provides an overview of working conditions and offers advice to consumers who are interested in working conditions in the garment industry. Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Material Type: Module

Problem Based Module: The College Debt Crisis

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In this project, you will explore a real-world problem, and then work through a series of steps to analyze that problem, research ways the problem could be solved, then propose a possible solution to that problem. Often, there are no specific right or wrong solutions, but sometimes one particular solution may be better than others. The key is making sure you fully understand the problem, have researched some possible solutions, and have proposed the solution that you can support with information / evidence.Begin by reading the problem statement in Step 1. Take the time to review all the information provided in the statement, including exploring the websites, videos and / or articles that are linked. Then work on steps 2 through 8 to complete this problem-based learning experience.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Authors: Bonnie Waltz, Deanna Mayers, Tracy Rains

How To Do Research Primary Source Unit

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This How To Do Research Unit Guide provides a lesson-to-lesson foundation for teaching:● What primary sources are● Real vs. fake information (evaluating sources)● Document analysis● Different ways to obtain information● How to formulate research questions● How to find answers to research questions● The hows and whys of citations (annotated bibliography)By the time students get to high school, they should have a basic understanding of how to effectively do research. Considering that there are so many steps involved in the research process, the earlier these necessary skills are taught, the more time students will be able to devote to theiractual projects. Moreover, in today’s world, information literacy needs to be achieved at an earlier age, so students can learn to be smart consumers, responsible sharers, and presenters of information. Throughout the research process, students will learn that there will be dead ends, questions that are too broad or too narrow, questions that do not have answers. This is an accurate reflection of what their experiences will continue to be as they move into higher level research projects in their educational careers. 

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Full Course, Homework/Assignment, Primary Source, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Author: The Rockefeller Archive Center

Lesson 3: Emulating Emily Dickinson: Poetry Writing

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In this lesson, students closely examine Dickinson's poem "There's a certain slant of light" in order to understand her craft. Students explore different components of Dickinson's poetry and then practice their own critical and poetry writing skills in an emulation exercise. Finally, in the spirit of Dickinson's correspondences, students will exchange their poems and offer informed critiques of each others' work.

Material Type: Lesson Plan