This paper opens a larger conversation about what must be done to realize opportunities presented by the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and the literacy standards in other subject areas. It emphasizes the simultaneous challenges and opportunities for ELLs.The paper emphasizes that texts are approached differently for different purposes. Students need opportunities to approach texts with these varied purposes in mind. It also highlights how ELLs may be well served by opportunities to explore and justify their own textual hypotheses, even if their initial interpretations diverge from those of the teacher.

By reading primary sources outlining the rights of prisoners of war, along with the primary accounts of American prisoners of war held by the Japanese, students should critically assess the nature of violations committed by the Japanese forces during World War II. Through this assessment, the students should be able to determine the specific ways Japanese forces violated the rights of American POWs. Students should also consider how the Geneva Conventions, and Japan’s lack of ratification, apply to the debates that surrounded Japanese war crimes at the postwar Tokyo Trials.

An introduction by David and Ben Crystal to the 'Original Pronunciation' production of Shakespeare and what they reveal about the history of the English language. The father and son acting team perform lines from Shakespeare's Henry V in both the original pronunciation and the modern pronunciation back-to-back.

Great supplemental resource to support teaching caption writing for teachers of journalism or advisors of yearbooks.

SlaveryStories.org is an open source project that anyone can can contribute to. It presents various slave narrtives in an easy to find and visably appealing mannter.  It is a good source for literature circles, historical comparisons and narrtive examples.

Smithsonian TweenTribune allows you to easily create a classroom and assign dailly AP news articles that are Lexile® leveled for K-12 students. It also includes: self-scoring quizzes customized by Lexile® level, critical thinking questions, student commenting, Espanol AP articles, weekly lesson plans and videos and weekend "Monday Morning Ready" newsletter as prep for the week ahead.

Remix this template to upload your WISELearn Grant lesson and unit plans into WISELearn

Having explored how Robert Hayden uses consonance, assonance, and alliteration to illustrate a complex relationship between a father and a son in "Those Winter Sundays," students engage in a variety of vocal activities and performance techniques based on word sounds. Students then prepare a recitation of the poem for small group performances and compare their interpretative choices as part of the reflection process.

This is a text that covers the standard topics in a sophomore-level course in discrete mathematics: logic, sets, proof techniques, basic number theory, functions, relations, and elementary combinatorics, with an emphasis on motivation. It explains and clarifies the unwritten conventions in mathematics, and guides the students through a detailed discussion on how a proof is revised from its draft to a final polished form. Hands-on exercises help students understand a concept soon after learning it. The text adopts a spiral approach: many topics are revisited multiple times, sometimes from a different perspective or at a higher level of complexity. The goal is to slowly develop students’ problem-solving and writing skills.

This lesson invites students to use their understanding of modern experiences with digital technologies to make active meaning of an older text, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama. Students first brainstorm a list of technologies they use, and then imagine what would happen if Romeo and Juliet were set in a modern-day world and that technology was available to the characters. Students work in small groups to create technology profiles for characters in the play, and then discuss their ideas with the class. Next, students select from a variety of projects in which they re-imagine a scene from the play with modern technology incorporated. Finally, students share their projects with the class and discuss why they made the choices of scene and technology that they did.

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck “created a literary portrait that defined an era. His account of the ‘Okie Exodus' in The Grapes of Wrath became the principal story through which America defined the experience of the Great Depression.”
However, according to this New Criterion article by Keith Windschuttle,  Ã¢â‚¬Å“there is now an accumulation of sufficient historical, demographic, and climatic data about the 1930s to show that almost everything about the elaborate picture created in the novel is either outright false or exaggerated beyond belief.”

Reading of "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

In this strategy guide, you’ll learn about Partner Talk—a way to provide students with another learning opportunity to make learning their own through collaboration and discussion. Partner Talk can be used for assessing classwork, making connections to prior knowledge, discussing vocabulary, or simplifying concepts.

One of the main goals of the English Language Arts Common Core Standards is to build natural collaboration and discussion strategies within students, helping to prepare them for higher levels of education and collaboration in the workforce. In today’s classrooms, students are using complex texts and are being asked to use a variety of strategies and provide evidence-based responses. Partner Talk is a best practice that gives students an active role in their learning and scaffold the experience for students.

This article describes how a high school teacher's approach to teaching "styles of writing" to her students. This lesson ties in reading and writing by taking what might be considered a difficult literary passage (ie: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald) and teach students to write like the author and receive feedback in a "workshop" setting where students receive feedback from one another.

This set of lessons extends over several days. Students work with a partner to read and annotate G.K. Chesterton's "The Fallacy of Success." Students take notes which summarize each section of the text. Students write an objective summary of the text, identifying two claims and determining how those claims are developed in the text.

The teacher in this blog provides two great strategies for writing strong thesis statements. 

The Teach Computing Curriculum is broken down into 4 key stages: Ages 5-7, Ages 7-11, Ages 11-14, and Ages 14-16.

Curriculum Information:
- Resources include lesson plans, slides, activity sheets, homework, and assessments
- Each key stage has a teacher guide and curriculum map to help you get started
- Built around an innovative progression framework where computing content has been organized into interconnected networks we call learning graphs
- Created by subject experts, using the latest pedagogical research and teacher feedback
All of the content is free for you to use, and in formats that make it easy for you to adapt it to meet the needs of your learners

TeachingBooks.net has a blog that includes monthly author posts.  These guest posts are written by a variety of authors and illustrators ranging from picture books to YA.  In the posts, the authors writing about their books and the writing process they go through while creating them.  They frequently include photographs of the work in progress to demonstrate to students their steps.  
This resource can be used to supplement an individual author study, to demonstrate the writing process in professional work or to simply expose students to new authors and their works.

This is a lesson for tropical rainforests that fits best for third- through fifth-grade students. There are multiple reading and writing strategies implemented within the lesson. Throughout the lessons, there will be opportunities to build upon prior knowledge, write, draw, and listen to sound effects of the rainforest. Students will use graphic organizers and websites to aid in the understanding and learning of rainforests. There are also extension lessons for students to create a list of questions in small groups to research. Throughout these lessons the students will be exposed to multiple media sources. 

These New York Times lesson suggestions bring teaching of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby into the 21st century. Teachers may choose from learner opportunities to analyze the historical and cultural icons of the 1920s and compare how America continues to be a society diverse in wealth distribution. Includes opportunities to create a gallery walk of 1920s history and culture, explore the modern film adaptation, and timeless themes, fictional characters, and author's style and craft in the novel.