The laws that govern and the social norms that regulate society are not always fair, legal, moral, or ethical. What is a person to do about all this injustice? What are the hazards of righting injustices or changing social norms? And what are the dangers of doing nothing?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate Antigone, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and Pygmalion.
Students write a literary analysis showing the effect of social class or the law on a character’s life.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

How do social class and legal institutions shape literary characters’ lives (and presumably our lives)?
How does social class affect a person in dealing with the law (protect a person, hurt a person)?
How is social class determined in America and in other places in the world?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In our lives, we are constantly telling stories to ourselves and to others in an attempt to both understand our experiences and present our best selves to others.  But how do we tell a story about ourselves that is both true and positive? How do we hold ourselves up in the best possible light, while still being honest about our struggles and our flaws? Students will explore ways of interpreting and portraying personal experiences.  They'll read Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart , analyzing the text through the eyes of one character. They'll get to know that character's flaws and strengths, and they'll tell part of the story from that character's perspective, doing their best to tell an honest tale that presents their character's best side. Then they'll explore their own stories, crafting a personal narrative about an important moment of learning in his or her life.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and analyze Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart , viewing the events and conflicts of the novel through the eyes of one of the central characters.
Students write a two-part narrative project: one narrative told through their character’s perspective and one personal narrative about an incident in their own life.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

How do our conflicts shape and show our character?
How can we tell a story about ourselves that’s both honest and positive?
How do definitions of justice change depending on the culture you live in?
What are ways individuals can react to a changing world? To a community that doesn’t accept us?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

Students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary and informational texts, focusing on how authors use word choice and rhetoric to develop ideas, and advance their points of view and purposes. The texts in this module represent varied voices, experiences, and perspectives, but are united by their shared exploration of the effects of prejudice and oppression on identity construction. Each of the module texts is a complex work with multiple central ideas and claims that complement the central ideas and claims of other texts in the module. All four module texts offer rich opportunities to analyze authorial engagement with past and present struggles against oppression, as well as how an author’s rhetoric or word choices strengthen the power and persuasiveness of the text.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In Module 11.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative process for research. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 11.1 and 12.2, students explore topics that have multiple positions and perspectives by gathering and analyzing research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which will serve as the early foundation of what will ultimately become a written research-based argument paper. The research-based argument paper synthesizes and articulates several claims using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence to support the claims. Students read and analyze sources to surface potential problem-based questions for research, and develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary texts, focusing on the authors’ choices in developing and relating textual elements such as character development, point of view, and central ideas while also considering how a text’s structure conveys meaning and creates aesthetic impact. Additionally, students learn and practice narrative writing techniques as they examine the techniques of the authors whose stories students analyze in the module.|

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Unit Overview:  The Writers on Writing Unit engages students in reading, analyzing, and creating literacy narratives, or stories about learning to read and write. The unit begins by asking students to view and read literacy narratives, and to analyze author’s literacy narratives through annotation, discussion, and writing a formal analysis essay. As students go through the narratives, they are asked to analyze author technique and purpose, paying close attention to style, syntax, and organization in preparation for writing their own authentic literacy narratives and ultimately creating digital storytelling projects about those narratives. By the end of this unit, students will have composed analysis writing, creative nonfiction, and multimedia stories. They will have had the ability to select certain reading assignments, to work in groups and with partners to brainstorm, edit, and revise, and they will have had guided writing lessons on composing strong sentences.  Days 3 to 5 Overview:   These plans are for Days 3 to 5 of the Writers on Writing Unit. On day 3, students listen to podcasts about different perspectives on struggling to read. They then complete a pre-assessment, reading and analyzing a literacy narrative with guided style analysis notes. Students will then review the pre-assessment activity in preparation for reading their own selections of professional literacy narratives on day 2. The lesson will culminate with students writing an analysis of a professional literacy narrative. Image source: "Idea" from Pxhere.com

Module 12.1 includes a shared focus on text analysis and narrative writing. Students read, discuss, and analyze two nonfiction personal narratives, focusing on how the authors use structure, style, and content to craft narratives that develop complex experiences, ideas, and descriptions of individuals. Throughout the module, students learn, practice, and apply narrative writing skills to produce a complete personal essay suitable for use in the college application process.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In Module 12.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative research process that serves as the basis of a culminating research-based argument paper. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 12.1 and 12.2, students use a seed text to surface and explore issues that lend themselves to multiple positions and perspectives. Module 12.3 fosters students’ independent learning by decreasing scaffolds in key research lessons as students gather and analyze research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which serves as the early foundation of what will ultimately become their research-based argument paper.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Students research, evaluate, and synthesize information about the Harlem Renaissance from varied resources, create an exhibit, and highlight connections across disciplines (i.e., art, music, and poetry) using a Venn diagram.

In this lesson, students will learn the defining characteristics of an ode. They will examine model texts from published authors and identify poetic devices at work in an ode. Ultimately, students are invited to compose an ode of their own.

Students use persuasive writing and an understanding of the characteristics of letters to the editor to compose effective letters to the editor on topics of interest to them.

Robert Frost said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." We might say the delight comes from the ways that poets play with words and use language to create word pictures that speak to the heart. Then, it is that message to the heart that brings the wisdom. This course will begin with a study of the language of poetry, then move on to looking at how poets use the tools of poetry to create their works, and end with using that language and those tools to study some of the world's great poems. Let's begin that journey!

In the first bend of this unit, students will closely read multiple perspectives on the “American Dream” in
order to collect information to use and integrate that information into an evidence-based perspective.
Students will examine primary and secondary source documents to make informed decisions about
what information to collect that may inspire their writing about “The American Dream.”

In the second bend of this unit, students will engage in a short-research process to create a draft of
argumentative speech on the “American Dream” with a specific purpose, audience, and tone in mind.
They will use their inquiry research questions from bend one to begin analyzing search results and citing
and gathering relevant, accurate, and credible information.

This activity is designed to help students reflect on the role of revision in the composition process. Designed for an end-of-semester portfolio project for a high school Creative Writing course, it could be easily adapted to be used in any classroom setting in which students have been expected to write and revise an original work.

This is a blank template for students to use for their research portfolios. Students will create an OER Commons account, access this resource, make a copy and rename the resource, and then add their own assignments and projects to the template.

This is a blank template for students to use for their research portfolios. Students will create an OER Commons account, access this resource, make a copy and rename the resource, and then add their own assignments and projects to the template.

Using the C3 Inquiry Design Model format, high school social studies and English students learn to understand lynching in Virginia in the Jim Crow South and discuss ways of taking informed action to move towards racial healing. Each inquiry is supported by the Virginia Standards of Learning and the Common Core Standards and is expected to take three-four 50-minute class periods. The inquiry time frame can expand if teachers think their students need additional instructional experiences (e.g., historical context, formative performance tasks, featured sources, writing, etc.). Teachers are encouraged to adjust the inquiry to meet the needs and interests of their students and school/community contexts. The inquiries lend themselves to differentiation and modeling of historical thinking skills while assisting students in reading a wide variety of sources and writing in a wide variety of genres.Use the next button or the drop down menu to navigate between pages. Please note, Social studies lessons are found at the bottom of page 2 and English lesson are found at the bottom of page 3.  For more information and/or access to the primary sources used in the lesson plans, please visit the Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia website.

When students are assigned an argument paper of 7-9 pages for Composition II, they often struggle to gather enough research material to fill the required pages.  This lesson is intended to help them expand their topics in order to write a good research question as well as to gather the appropriate amount of information.

This lesson extends over several class periods. Students view a Prezi presentation on Toulmin's argument and complete an assignment based on the presentation. Students then write an argument essay about the power of prevailing passion over reason.