Cluster 2: Production and Distribution of WritingArchived

This website provides an easy to use free platform for teachers to engage students in online discussions regarding the content of the course. Tutorials and directions along with examples and suggestions are provided.

Type: Educational Software / Tool

In this lesson, students will listen to a mini-lecture by a history professor regarding two passages included in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence but deleted from the final version. Students will then participate in an analysis of the two passages, then write an argumentative essay about the professor's argument.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will listen to a mini-lecture by a history professor regarding two passages included in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence but deleted from the final version. Students will then participate in a close-reading analysis of the two passages to understand the professor's argument, explaining it in an essay. The hypocrisy of slavery is the primary theme: Can a people who enslave others validly plead for their own freedom?

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read and analyze the satire in Mark Twain's, "Advice to Youth." Students will answer text-dependent questions and write a short analysis regarding how Twain uses satire to support his claim.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students examine the poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and determine the mood of the poem from figurative language and repetitive elements contained in the poem.

Type: Lesson Plan

This unit from Student Achievement Partner web resources has been developed to guide students and instructors in a close reading of Learned Hand's "I am an American Day Address". The activities and actions described below follow a carefully developed set of steps that assist students in increasing their familiarity and understanding of Hand's speech through a series of text-dependent tasks and questions that ultimately develop college and career ready skills. This unit is recommended as an activity for a "Great Conversation" Module and can be taught in two days of study and reflection on the part of students and their teachers. A third day or more could be added if the time is needed or extension activities are desired.

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

This comprehensive lesson from ReadWriteThink.org helps students understand the complexity of a character (primarily the hero or protagonist) in a literary work. Several resources are included and the lesson is clear and easy to follow. Also, the culminating project offers several choices that should encourage student curiosity and creativity. Although the lesson is written for five 50 minute sessions, the teacher implementing the activities could effectively complete the lesson in less time.

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

This is Part three of a three-part series on the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Students will analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald's inspirations for both his characters and stories. In this lesson, students will analyze a 1928 portrait of Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee as a stimulus for creating an original character living during the glitter and glamour of the 1920s. Finally, using compiled textual evidence recorded throughout the three lessons, students will create a narrative in the style of Fitzgerald for Louise Brooks.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is Part two of this three-part series on the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Through reading and analyzing excerpts from F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Offshore Pirate" (1920) in Flappers and Philosophers, students will examine the characterization of Artida and Carlyle and compare the two characters.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read and analyze the "Narrative of the Captivity" for Rowlandson's use of allusion as it contributes to the meaning of her account. In addition, they will identify and analyze the central idea and supporting details as they contribute to meaning.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students first complete a survey to establish their beliefs about technology before using a literary elements map to explore the role of fictional technology in a novel such as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, REM World, or Feed (additional titles that could be used, including short stories, are included within the lesson plan). Next, using evidence from the text, students discuss and debate what they believe the story's author is saying about technology. As an assessment, students will utilize one of the items from the survey that caused the most disagreement in group discussions to form an argument as to why they think the author would agree or disagree with that particular statement on the survey. Students will write a letter to persuade another student in the class who disagrees with their viewpoint. Another group discussion can follow the exchange of these letters.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this four-part lesson series, students will delve into the topic of grief through analysis of poetic devices, form, and point of view in poems by Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Students will connect theme to the poets’ viewpoints on the emotions, or the lack thereof, that one experiences during times of pain and loss. Students will read the poems multiple times to seek layers of meaning and write an in-depth analysis.

Type: Lesson Plan

After reading Richard Wright's short novel Rite of Passage, students will demonstrate their understanding of plot, character, and conflict by writing recommendations for the protagonists' future to a juvenile court system judge.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read Emily Dickinson poems, complete text marking and annotations of the poems, and write a response that explains their analysis of how Emily Dickinson uses figurative language to create tone.

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 teaching idea guides students in generating questions for a student led seminar based on their reading of August Wilson's play, "The Piano Lesson". Students will then use their questions to conduct a Socratic Seminar about the play.

Type: Teaching Idea

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

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

In order to appreciate historical fiction, students need to understand factual context and recognize how popular culture reflects the values, mores, and events of a time period. Since a newspaper records significant events and attitudes representative of a period, students will create a literary newspaper (8 pages) depicting life of the "Roaring Twenties" utilizing primary source materials from the American Memory collections

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

After gaining skill 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