Students write an analysis essay to identify and explain the rhetorical strategies utilized in a famous speech that make it an effective argument.

This is an article from National Public Radio which provides details of recent research which resulted in Christopher Marlowe being given co-authorship of three of Shakespeare's plays--Henry V Parts I, II and III. The article also interviews experts who disagree with these findings.

The resource is a full interview (approximately 17 minutes) with the author of Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston.  She discusses civil rights violations regarding the internment of Japanese Americans in camps in the western U.S. during WWII.
Students watch this author interview to supplement knowledge learned during the reading of the author's book.  They will glean additional information about the time period, the history, the events, as well as the feelings of the author during the events of the book and after writing the book as she is now in the interview.

Use this resource to review a possible curriculum for a high school level Global Studies course aligned to the English-Language Arts Common Core State Standards and Wisconsin Social Studies Standards. The goal of this course is to ensure that students are purposeful, motivated readers who make meaning from what they read to be democratic citizens now and in the future. Throughout this course, students will become independent learners that understand the value of reading and writing in today’s global community. This course will foster the 21st Century skills of creativity, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, communication, productivity, and innovation within a context that uses standards from both the Wisconsin Social Studies Standards and the Common Core State Standards for English-language Arts (CCSS ELA). Moving throughout the year, students will focus on the five strands of social studies aligned by the Wisconsin Standards:

Geography: People, Places, and Environment

History: Time, Continuity, and Change

Political Science and Citizenship: Power, Authority, Governance, and Responsibility

Economics: Production, Distribution, Exchange, and Consumption

The Behavior Sciences: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures

In Module 10.1, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts and explore how complex characters develop through their interactions with each other, and how these interactions develop central ideas such as parental and communal expectations, self-perception and performance, and competition and learning from mistakes.

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

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze nonfiction and dramatic texts, focusing on how the authors convey and develop central ideas concerning imbalance, disorder, tragedy, mortality, and fate.

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

In this lesson students build their knowledge base and learn to read and summarize informational texts. Students will be able to read and summarize informational text, identify key details from surprising details, and recognize the main ideas/concepts presented in articles. They will also be able to listen, take notes, and discuss the issues presented in informational texts with a small group.

This webfolio is a follow-up assignment to an Honors English unit on Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achiebe. In this webfolio, students will take on the role of social scientists interested in learning more about the life of Africans in different parts of the continent. They will each have different aspects of African culture and life to research.The webfolio format emphasizes the power of teamwork and the Internet to learn all about an area of Africa. Each team will learn about one region of the continent, and then they will come together to get a better understanding of Africa as a whole by participating in and observing classroom presentations. The culminating project combines individual research and informational genre format into a first-person travel diary, imagining an actual trip through each region of Africa.

Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction. Daily news articles are grouped by topics such as Arts, Sports, War and Peace. Teachers search by topic, grade level, standards, and available quizzes, and they can also create a class and assign articles to read. Each article has five available lexiles to help differentiate for students. Students can practice targeted reading skills through typed written responses.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a rich text full of difficult language and complex themes. It is still a common text for high school students to read because of the connections to real life. Through this activity, students will be reading informational texts, watching video clips, and discussing how the theme of forbidden love is prominent in the 21st century. Students will become familiar with a Romeo and Juliet story from the 1990s, but also make connections to life today. This resource is available for free on Teacherspayteachers.com with registration. 

In this lesson students use a simple SOAPSTone form (College Board resource) to analyze six aspects of informational texts: subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, and tone.

This lesson allows students to explore the different sides associated with the issue of slavery. It can be used for either cross-content lessons between English and Social Studies, as part of an argument unit in English, or as part of a larger unit in Social Studies. The learning objectives for the lesson are that students are able to identify those who are for and against slavery, understand how people used the U.S. Constitution to support their reasons for/against slavery, and the economic argument for or against slavery.

Reading, analyzing, and evaluating informational text is a challenge for students. Here are some strategies for helping students complete close reading.