COERLL has partnered with Rose Potter and Betsy Arnold to publish Recorridos-Don Quijote, a pair of openly-licensed books for the study of Cervantes’ Don Quijote in upper level Spanish courses, including AP. The student workbook, accessible online for free, deepens students’ understanding of the text through reading, pre-reading, and post-reading activities and glosses. The companion teacher support facilitates the teaching of Don Quijote through student-centered strategies and activities, historical and cultural information, quizzes, exams and more.

Edgar Allan Poe, an American icon, is celebrated for his life and work. This lesson will delve deeper into his early life, his macabre short stories, his poem "The Raven," and his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849.

This Remote Learning Plan was created by Denise Mixdorf 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 high school, grades 9-12, ELA students. Students will read a narrative, then select and explain the main idea. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: LA 12.1.6 Comprehension.It is expected that this Remote Learning Plan will take students approximately 90 minutes to complete.Here is the direct link to the Google Doc: Six Traits: Ideas Lesson Plan

This Remote Learning Plan was created by Amy Brown 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 11 Grade, English Language Arts students. Students will begin with an introduction to Willa Cather through autobiographical readings and video.  They will then move to “A Wagner Matinee” a short story written by Willa Cather and either write a short paragraph describing the theme of the story or create a graphic Theme drawing.  The final lesson in this is to read My Antonia by Willa Cather, annotate the chapters, and create various character projects at the end of the novel.   This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: 12.1.6b,12.1.6h, 12.1.6i,  12.3.1 a, 12.3.1b; 12.3.3a, and 12.3.3b. It is expected that this Remote Learning Plan will take students 7 Weeks to complete.  

The Renaissance has justly become both famous and notorious as an age of discovery, and its voyages took place in many realms. This semester, we will read several history making narratives of early modern travel: first-hand accounts of discovery, captivity, conquest, or cultural encounter. As Europeans came to acquire experience of unfamiliar places, literary texts of the period began to assimilate this experience by describing imagined voyages across real or fantastic landscapes. Finally, voyages of exploration served Renaissance writers as a metaphor: for intellectual inquiry, for spiritual development, or for the pursuit of love. Among the literary genres sampled this semester will be sonnets, plays, prose narratives, utopias, and chivalric romance. Authors and travellers will include Francis Petrarch, Amerigo Vespucci, Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Hernán Cortés, John Donne, Francis Drake, Mary Rowlandson, Francis Bacon.

This course uses the study of rhetoric as an opportunity to offer instruction in critical thinking. Through extensive writing and speaking assignments, students will develop their abilities to analyze texts of all kinds and to generate original and incisive ideas of their own. Critical thinking and original analysis as expressed in writing and in speech are the paramount goals of this class. The course will thus divide its efforts between an examination of the subject matter and an examination of student writing and speaking, in order to encourage in both instances the principal aims of the course.

This course is an examination of the theory, the practice, and the implications of rhetoric & rhetorical criticism. This semester, you will have the opportunity to deepen many of your skills: Analysis, persuasion, oral presentation, and critical thinking. In this course you will act as both a rhetor (a person who uses rhetoric to persuade) and as a rhetorical critic (one who analyzes the rhetoric of others). Both the rhetor and the rhetorical critic write to persuade; both ask and answer important questions. Always one of their goals is to create new knowledge for all of us, so no endeavor in this class is a “mere exercise.”

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.

Using a primarily “quasi-bibliotherapeutic” approach, this curriculum unit seeks to afford adolescent middle school students an opportunity to discover and identify with characters, situations and/or literary elements within a narrative framework. By using narrative text, this writer seeks to provide an opportunity for students to discover and critically deliberate the concept of identity and its development. The term “quasi-bibliotherapeutic” is used to insinuate a connection with the reading of literature, generation of self-knowledge, and the crafting of an individual’s own identity narrative. It is not meant to imply that by reading the various texts contained herein a guide to self-discovery has been provided or such renderings will be therapeutic. This unit serves as an exploratory vehicle for the engagement of meaningful and thought provoking conversation with and between students. This unit should also provide fodder for student reflection on the concept of their identity as individuals and their placement within society. This unit may be used to supplement or enrich an existing middle school English language arts or literature curriculum.

Watch cast members from the National Theater's production of Romeo and Juliet attempt to summarize the play in 60-seconds! Use this video as a challenge to students to create their own version that covers the plot of the play in one minute.

This collection uses primary sources to explore The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The science essay uses science to think about the human condition; it uses humanistic thinking to reflect on the possibilities and limits of science and technology. In this class we read and practice writing science essays of varied lengths and purposes. We will read a wide variety of science essays, ranging across disciplines, both to learn more about this genre and to inspire your own writing. This semester’s reading centers on “The Dark Side,” with essays ranging from Alan Lightman’s “Prisoner of the Wired World” through Robin Marantz Henig’s cautionary account of nano-technology (“Our Silver-Coated Future”) to David Quammen’s investigation of diseases that jump from animals to humans (“Deadly Contact”).

This video was created to introduce middle school students to science fiction as a genre. It was intended for educational and instructional purposes only.

In the activities included below, students will closely examine images related to the Human Rights theme. Students will make connections to informational and literary texts that expand their understanding of global issues and their rights as citizens of the world. The activities included ask students to reference specific literary and informational texts, however, all activities may be adapted to fit with a number of different texts that touch on the same topics and issues.

This course provides an introduction to writing about science (including medicine, technology, and engineering) for general readers. With a strong emphasis in background research, this course will help students build a foundation for strong science writing. Students will read works by accomplished science writers. Each assignment will focus on a different popular form, such as news articles, interviews, essays, and short features.

Proficiency in communicating about science and technology comes from both knowledge and practice, and this course emphasizes both. Through a variety of reading and writing assignments, we will examine general principles of good writing, as well as principles associated specifically with scientific and technical writing. We will also explore the effects of new media as avenues for communicating about science.

Like other scientists, medical researchers and clinicians must be capable of presenting their work to an audience of professional peers. Unlike many scientists, however, physicians must routinely translate their sophisticated knowledge into lay terms for their own patients and for the education of the public at large. A surprising number of physicians write for less utilitarian reasons as well, choosing the narrative essay as a means of exploring the non-technical issues that emerge in their clinical practice. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the full range of writings by physicians and other health practitioners.

This class is an introduction to writing about science—including nature, medicine and technology—for general readers. In our reading and writing we explore the craft of making scientific concepts, and the work of scientists, accessible to the public through articles and essays.

Environmentalists have traditionally relied upon the power of their prose to transform the thoughts and behavior of their contemporaries. In 1963, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist with a penchant for writing, described a world without wildlife in Silent Spring and altered the way Americans understood their impact on the landscape. Like other writers we will encounter this semester, Carson realized that she could alter the perceptions of her contemporaries only if she was able to transmit her knowledge in engaging and accessible language. We will do our best to follow in her footsteps.