After studying utopian literature, students design their own utopian society, publishing the explanation of their ideal world on a blog. As they blog about their utopia, students establish the habits, practices, and organizing social structures that citizens will follow in their utopian societies. They begin by brainstorming ideas about what a perfect society would be like and then, in groups, begin to plan their project. Next, they become familiar with the blogging process, including legal guidelines and the specific site they will be using. Over several class sessions, students work on their blogs comparing their work to a rubric. Finally, after students visit one another's blogs and provide constructive and supportive feedback, they reflect on their own work. The lesson plan includes alternative handouts for classrooms where computer or blog access is limited. In this alternative, students complete the same basic activities, but publish their work using a Flip Book.

In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In Module 9.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative process for research. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 9.1 and 9.2, students explore topics of interest, gather research, and generate an evidence-based perspective to ultimately write an informative/explanatory research paper that synthesizes and articulates their findings. Students use textual analysis to surface potential topics for research, and develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

This lesson is used for discussion of a novel read by the whole class. Working individually and in groups, using symbols, drawings, shapes, and colors, alongside words and quotations, students construct a graphic of their section of the novel using an online tool and then on newsprint or butcher paper with crayons or markers. When all groups have completed their graphics, they will present them to the class, explaining why they chose the elements they used. Finished graphics can be displayed on a class bulletin board, on walls, or on a Web page. Finally, students will write an individual essay analyzing one element of the novel.

Students further develop close reading skills as they
examine Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The
tragedy of Hamlet develops many
central ideas, including revenge, mortality, madness, and the tension between
action and inaction. Students analyze the play through the close study of
Hamlet’s soliloquies and other key scenes to determine how Shakespeare’s
language and choices about how to structure the play impact character
development and central ideas. The showing of a filmed version of the play in
select lessons supplements students’ understanding of plot and background
points and encourages them to consider actors’ interpretations of the text.

Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.

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Per the author, learning new vocabulary words is important for all readers, and an important part of the learning process is finding the definitions. This lesson teaches students how to track unfamiliar words as they read, link these words to their background knowledge, create new sentences for their words, and finally develop a project that displays their new vocabulary. This lesson could be adapted for ELL students or students in grades 6 to 8.