Students debate about incorporating service-learning into their school's curriculum.
The Great Service-Learning Debate & Research Project
Facilitating Student-Led Seminar Discussions with The Piano Lesson
August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson invites students to ask a number of questions—big
and small. Students learn how to create effective discussion questions and then put them to use in student-led discussions.
Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments
Students are often asked to perform speeches, but rarely do we require students to analyze speeches as carefully as we study works of literature. In this unit, students are required to identify the rhetorical strategies in a famous speech and the specific purpose for each chosen device. They will write an essay about its effectiveness and why it is still famous after all these years.
An Exploration of The Crucible through Seventeenth-Century Portraits
In this lesson, students incorporate analyses of characters from The Crucible with examinations of original seventeenth-century portraits of Puritans to create a visual portrait of the character. The project culminates in a "Portrait Gallery Walk" where students present and defend their artwork.
Brave New Words: Novice Lexicography and the Oxford English Dictionary
Students become novice lexicographers as they explore recent new entries to the dictionary, learn the process of writing entries for the Oxford English Dictionary, and write a new entry themselves.
Choose, Select, Opt, or Settle: Exploring Word Choice in Poetry
Students investigate the effects of word choice in Robert Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" to construct a more sophisticated understanding of speaker, subject, and tone.
Language and Power in The Handmaid's Tale and the World
Students work in small groups to examine Margaret Atwood's use of and observations about language in The Handmaid's Tale. Through this activity, students discover and articulate overarching thematic trends in the book and then can extend their observations about official or political language to examples from their own world.
Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading
Students develop close reading skills connecting sound with sense in the poem "Those Winter Sundays," and write an original text that reflects their new learning.
Joining the Conversation about Young Adult Literature
Students create a persuasive case calling for the adoption of a particular young adult literature title into their school's language arts curriculum by writing letters or speeches.
Modeling Academic Writing Through Scholarly Article Presentations
Students prepare an already published scholarly article for presentation, with an emphasis on identification of the author's thesis and argument structure.
Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose
Students create brochures on the same topic as another piece of writing they have done, highlighting how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers.
Family Memoir: Getting Acquainted With Generations Before Us
Creating a memoir of an older family member allows students both to learn more about their own backgrounds and to learn the power of storytellers.
Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing
Students will research a local issue, and then write letters to two different audiences, asking readers to take a related action or adopt a specific position on the issue.
From Dr. Seuss to Jonathan Swift: Exploring the History behind the Satire
Use Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book as an accessible introduction to satire. Reading, discussing, and researching this picture book paves the way for a deeper understanding of Gulliver's Travels.
Persuading an Audience: Writing Effective Letters to the Editor
Students use persuasive writing and an understanding of the characteristics of letters to the editor to compose effective letters to the editor on topics of interest to them.
The Comic Book Show and Tell
Students craft comic scripts using clear, descriptive, and detailed writing that shows (illustrates) and tells (directs). After peers create an artistic interpretation of the script, students revise their original scripts.
Onomatopoeia: A Figurative Language Minilesson
Clang, clash, or tinkle? Students explore the use of onomatopoeia in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" before choosing their own sound words in response to specific sounds.
Designing Museum Exhibits for The Grapes of Wrath: A Multigenre Project
Using The Grapes of Wrath as a backdrop, students conduct research on issues that the novel addresses, publishing their findings in a multigenre museum exhibit.
Myth and Truth: The Gettysburg Address
By exploring myths and truths surrounding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding this famous speech from the Civil War era.
Copyright Infringement or Not? The Debate over Downloading Music
This lesson takes advantage of students' interest in music and audio sharing. Students investigate multiple perspectives in the music downloading debate and develop a persuasive argument for a classroom debate.