Cluster 4: Range of Reading and Level of Text ComplexityArchived

This resource is a lesson plan in which students analyze the 15th Amendment to the Constitution and then learn about the obstacles to actual voting rights that persisted in the post-Reconstruction South (black codes, poll taxes, lynching, etc.). It features a group-based assessment and a follow-up activity in which students create their own political cartoon.

Type: Lesson Plan

Examine what it means to be an American by analyzing a speech delivered by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, in 1941. This tutorial is Part Three of a three-part series. In this tutorial, you will read more excerpts from Ickes’ speech, and then you will evaluate the effectiveness of his argument's structure. 

Be sure to complete the first two parts before completing Part Three.

Click HERE for Part One. Click HERE for Part Two. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Examine what it means to be an American by analyzing a speech delivered by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, in 1941. This tutorial is Part Two of a three-part series. In this tutorial, you will read excerpts from Ickes’ speech, and then you will identify his use of rhetorical appeals and analyze the structure of his argument. 

Make sure to complete Part One first. Click HERE for Part One.

Click HERE for Part Three.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Examine what it means to be an American by analyzing a speech delivered by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, in 1941. This tutorial is Part One of a three-part series. In this tutorial, you will read excerpts from the opening sections of Ickes’ speech. Then, you will work on determining his purpose, point of view, and important claims in these sections.  

Make sure to complete all three parts! Click HERE to view Part Two. Click HERE to view Part Three.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This collection of articles covers a wide variety of topics that teens would find interesting. Each article includes thoughtful questions that require close reading and/or personal written response. Teachers can choose which articles to assign and how to grade student responses.

Type: Resource Collection

The goal of this two to three day exemplar from Student Achievement Partner web resources is to give students the opportunity to use effective reading and writing habits to make meaning out of complex text. By closely reading and re-reading the The Gospel of Wealth, and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will identify the ways Andrew Carnegie proposes his philosophy for the distribution of wealth and the responsibility of philanthropy. When combined with writing about the passage, students will discover how much they can learn from engaging with a text in the form of a close reading.

Type: Teaching Idea

The Florida Holocaust Museum invites educators to use our dynamic trunk curriculum to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. These large teaching trunks are designed to accommodate the needs of one class or a team of teachers. The High School Teaching Trunk focuses on the theme of individual experiences during the Holocaust. Through studying non-fiction such as diaries, memoirs, and biographies supported by secondary sources, students examine the impact of historical events on individuals.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class. In this article, the author revisits the once-tacky Gettysburg battlefield to report on its rehabilitation by the National Park Service and its current status as a serious gathering place for students and re-enactors of history.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class. In this article, the author, a professor of aeronautics, reflects on the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite and how it inspired both Cold War paranoia and a national commitment to scientific education. Sputnik, he concludes, was a true historical turning point.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class. This article both retells the struggles of the Freedom Riders who were beaten and arrested in 1961, and also interviews them on their experiences, more than 50 years later. It is accompanies by a photo gallery of before/after photos of the Freedom Riders.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class.

This article explores the origins - both in language and ideology - of the complicated concept "American Exceptionalism." The author explains the positive and negative implications of the idea and the impact American Exceptionalism has on our culture and politics today.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class.

This editorial suggests that military bases named after Confederate generals should be more properly renamed after those who "actually performed in the defense of the United States." With a military composed of 20% African Americans, the author argues, it is inappropriate to ask soldiers to serve in bases which honor those who fought to preserve a "racist slavocracy."

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class. The author, in an excerpt from his book Last Call, profiles Wayne Wheeler, once the leading "dry" activist in the struggle for the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class.

In this essay, the author uses the occasion of a new retrospective documentary about Watergate to explore the limitations of American's understanding of the scandal and its true implications.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the Social Studies content area. It is most appropriate for 11th-12th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History class.

The author uses the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration to reflect on the undiminished popularity of this (to many historians) overrated president, leading to his general reflection on presidential reputations.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area.

Analyzing dozens of examples of cave art from places such as Lascaux, France, scientists determined that prehistoric artists were better at depicting the way four-legged animals walk than artists from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Type: Text Resource