LAFS.8.W.2.4Archived Standard

Students will evaluate what types of evidence provide relevant and logical support for moon formation theories.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn about a subject as they read and analyze multiple text types before writing a business letter explaining a decision they will be asked to make. This lesson incorporates poetry, authentic non-fiction, photography, and writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, answer text-dependent questions, and examine a theme of the story, "Be careful what you wish for." In the summative assessment students will write their own narrative that shares the same theme.

Type: Lesson Plan

This two-day lesson, "A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative," by Traci Gardner, is provided by ReadWriteThink.org, a website developed by the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, with support from the Verizon Foundation.

In the lesson, students view an image that tells a story and brainstorm the possible event or situation the image illustrates. Each student then writes a narrative from the point of view of one of the characters, revealing the character's thoughts/feelings and the events that led up to the image or the events that will follow.

Type: Lesson Plan

The goal of this one to two day exemplar from Student Achievement Partner web resources is to give students the opportunity to observe the dynamic nature of the Constitution through the practice of close reading and writing habits. By reading and re-reading the passage closely, and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will explore the questions Monk raises and perhaps even pursue additional avenues of inquiry. When combined with writing about the passage, not only will students form a deeper appreciation of Monk’s argument and the value of struggling with complex text, but of the Preamble of the Constitution itself.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a Teaching Tolerance lesson centering on Mary Church Terrell. The text shows the role of Mary Church Terrell and the NACW in working for civil rights in the decades before the modern civil rights movement. This lesson is very strong in vocabulary development (including using both context clues and word parts to determine meaning), summarizing, and author's purpose and perspective. The lesson could be used in either Language Arts or Social Studies classrooms and lends itself well to further research.

Type: Lesson Plan

The goal of this lesson is to give students the opportunity to explore the connotations and denotations of the word "normal" and its various meanings. Through the use of "Us and Them," a personal essay by David Sedaris, students will explore the various beliefs and points of view of "normal" based on the picture painted by Sedaris. Students will need to consider the emotional context of words and how diction reveals an author's tone and message, as well as how the use of irony can impact the tone of a piece. Students will also read and analyze a Time article, "An In-Depth View of America by the Numbers," by Nancy Gibbs. For the summative assessment, students will write an explanatory essay (several prompts are provided) about normality using evidence from the texts studied in the lesson for support.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students use geometry formulas to solve a fruit growing company's dilemma of packing fruit into crates of varying dimensions. Students calculate the volume of the crates and the volume of the given fruit when given certain numerical facts about the fruit and the crates.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn about moon formation theories, the evidence scientists have to support the current one, and how models can be used to support the theory.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is part two in a two-part series using Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 71." In this lesson, students will to identify and explain theme in poetry and write a short response.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be studying the narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and discussing how a "poem can tell a story." Students will focus upon citing evidence to support meaning found in the poem and then using those inferences to complete a comparison/contrast essay. Part of this study will include watching a 4 minute clip from the movie The Blind Side in which Tim McGraw's character explains the meaning of the poem in terms of a football game between rivals LSU and Ole Miss. Students will be asked to compare and contrast the poem's meaning in terms of battle in war and battle on the football field, determine how these two situations are similar and different, and finally be asked to explain if the football analogy was helpful in aiding the understanding of the story the poem tells.

Type: Lesson Plan

This focus of this lesson is to provide students with an opportunity to write arguments to support a claim, including evidence, research, and a counterclaim(s). Students will draft an argumentative essay, peer edit each others" text, and then revise their own product. Graphic organizers, argumentative techniques, and a rubric are included in this lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is part one in a three part series that covers Ismael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. In this lesson, students will review chapters 1-7 of by discussing notable quotes, analyzing the development of the central idea, and determining the argument Beah introduces and supports through the telling of his memoir.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is lesson three in a three part series that covers Ismael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Students will have read chapters 15-21 before this lesson. In this lesson, students will use all evidence gleaned from their reading of the memoir, the graphic organizer and student handout information from the first two lessons, and conduct additional research to create a multimedia presentation.

Type: Lesson Plan

This poetry writing teaching idea encourages students to explore their own family history and culture to develop a poem that tells some of the life experiences and ideas who have helped shape who they are as a person. This teaching idea can also be used by the student to write about a character in a novel as a more in-depth way of understanding the character's development.

Type: Teaching Idea

What images symbolize hatred, peace, freedom, or confinement? What feelings do these images evoke in the viewer? What power do images have? These and many other questions provide the framework for students to use technology to explore symbolism in Elie Wiesel's Night. Students begin with a discussion of everyday symbols, such as street signs and hand gestures, to help them come up with their own definition for symbolism. Students then choose and analyze a passage from Night that uses darkness as a symbol, and then brainstorm how they might reinterpret their selected passage as an image. After learning about symbolism and discussing its use in the book, students create visual representations using an interactive tool. Students then express their response to the symbolism in the book by creating a photo montage using images from multiple websites about the Holocaust, text from survivor stories, articles about hate crimes, and Night.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence