LAFS.1112.W.2.5Archived Standard

In this lesson, students will explore the similarities and differences that exist between modern American culture and the setting of a story or novel that they have read in class. Any story or novel that is set in another society, whether it is a foreign country, a dystopian society, a fictional land, or simply another time period, can be used. The lesson serves as both an assessment of the student's reading comprehension and an activity to help develop skill in writing through the use of brainstorming, a graphic organizer, teacher feedback, and peer review. Two different assignment sheets, organizers, and rubrics are provided to allow for teacher flexibility.

Type: Lesson Plan

Huck Finn's moral journey parallels Mark Twain's own questions about slavery. Like the photographers of the nineteenth-century, Twain, a Realist, struggled with how best to portray fictionalized characters, while still expressing truth and creating social commentary. In this lesson, students use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast Mark Twain's novel and/or excerpts from Frederick Doulgass' narrative to original photographs of slaves from the late-nineteenth century. Then they write an essay to compare the different portrayals, arguing to what extent art can reliably reflect truth. In addition, they will discuss art as social commentary.

Type: Lesson Plan

After reading or viewing a text, students are introduced to propaganda techniques and then identify examples in the text. Students discuss these examples, and then explore the use of propaganda in popular culture by looking at examples in the media. Students identify examples of propaganda techniques used in clips of online political advertisements and explain how the techniques are used to persuade voters. Next, students explore the similarities of the propaganda techniques used in the literary text and in the online political ads to explain the commentary the text is making about contemporary society. Finally, students write a persuasive essay in support of a given statement.

In this lesson, some specific references are made to Brave New World as examples. A text list suggests additional novels, short stories, plays, and movies that will also work for this activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson sequence, students will read and analyze the poem "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. For the summative assessment, students will compose a fictional narrative from the perspective of a chosen character from the poem. The character will reveal how his/her days spent at the pool hall influenced who he/she is today.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this third and final lesson of the Native American Myth Unit, the students will use what they learned in the first two lessons to create original myths. They will use vivid, sensory language, well-structured event sequences, and standard English conventions as they go through the various stages of drafting, editing, and publishing.

Type: Lesson Plan

The goal of this four-day exemplar is to give students the opportunity to use the reading and writing habits they've been practicing on a regular basis to discover the rich language and life lesson embedded in Dillard's text. By reading and rereading the passage closely and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will be equipped to unpack Dillard's essay. When combined with writing about the passage, students will learn to appreciate how Dillard's writing contains a deeper message and derive satisfaction from the struggle to master complex text.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will identify and analyze how Emily Dickinson uses figurative language to create tone. Students will complete text marking and annotations to show their analysis and will write a response that explains their analysis.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will identify and analyze how two authors use figurative language to support the themes of each of their poems. Students will complete text marking and annotations to show their analysis of each, and will write a response that explains their analysis of each.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn to distinguish between passive and active voice and how to revise sentences by changing them from passive voice to active voice in this interactive Space Race-themed tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This tutorial provides you with step-by-step instructions for all aspects of writing a research paper and includes a comprehensive list of links to various style guides. Quizzes are also provided for self-assessment. Simply click start at the bottom of the home page to begin the presentation. If you want to only use portions of the tutorial, use the scroll down menu from the Jump To section located at the top of each presentation slide.

Type: Tutorial

In this vidcast from the Purdue Online Writing Lab, you will learn how to write your personal statement for your college application. Further, you will be able to write for a specific audience while adhering to particular guidelines for your format and style. Note- the vidcast may take a minute or two to load.

Type: Tutorial

This is a comprehensive guide that can help students with writing. This resource includes materials that will help students write in different formats, including personal essays, cause/effect papers, essays about literature, and research papers. There are materials that will help students with different aspects of the writing process, including how to develop an introduction or conclusion, how to write a thesis statement, and how to effectively use transitions.

Type: Tutorial

After gaining skills through analyzing a historic and contemporary speech as a class, students will select a famous speech from a list compiled from several resources and write an essay that identifies and explains the rhetorical strategies that the author deliberately chose while crafting the text to make an effective argument. Their analysis will consider questions such as: "What makes the speech an argument?", "How did the author's rhetoric evoke a response from the audience?", and "Why are the words still venerated today?".

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence