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 Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will use their knowledge of the organization of the periodic table and the basic properties of atoms to determine which elements should be used to develop compounds with two atoms of different elements. Students must determine the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in a neutrally charged atom of an element using the periodic table. They must also determine which elements will likely bond together using their location on the periodic table. Students completing this MEA will develop two short essay responses to a client in the scientific industry.

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

In this lesson, students will conduct a close reading of the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs. Students will work to determine the meanings of selected vocabulary words from the story, answer text-dependent questions, and examine a moral of the story, "Be careful what you wish for." In the summative assessment students will write their own narrative that shares the same moral. This lesson includes a vocabulary graphic organizer and key, text-dependent questions and key, a story planning graphic organizer, and a rubric for the narrative.

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

In this third lesson of a three-part unit, students will explore structure and its affect on theme in poetry. Using pairs of poems about the Holocaust, students will use graphic organizers and rubrics to help them organize their observations into a comparison/contrast essay and Socratic Seminar contributions. The summative assessment for the three-lesson unit is a final draft of an essay (drafted in Part I of the unit) about what separates poetry from prose.

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

In this second lesson of a three-part unit, students will explore how to identify and explain theme in poetry. Small group and full class discussions will be included as will a review of poetic and sound devices. Using Shakespeare's "Sonnet 71" and poetry of the Holocaust, students will analyze two poems and write theme analysis paragraphs for one of them with the help of a graphic organizer and rubric.

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 central ideas 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

In this lesson, students will read chapters 1-7 of Ismael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier while learning how to analyze the chapters using a reader response journal, create an oral argument through a Seed Discussion, and in writing a central idea statement.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson (part 3 of 3 in a unit), students will read chapters 15-21 of Ismael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier while learning how to create an argumentation essay using a Socratic Seminar discussion, a SOAPTone Strategy, Opinion/Proof Two Column Notes, reading articles and graphics.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze a rich literary nonfiction text illustrating the rescue of British soldiers at Dunkirk in 1940. Through use of repeated readings, text dependent questions, class discussion, and two writing tasks, students will examine the miraculous nature of what happened at Dunkirk and how shared human values played a part in the outcome of this event. This lesson was designed originally for use in a middle school Social Studies curriculum, where teaching students to go beneath a surface understanding of historical events is at a premium. Although this exemplar was designed to be used in a middle school Social Studies curriculum, it is appropriate for use in an ELA class as well.

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource 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. It presents a teaching idea for using a digital organizer to walk students through the mapping and writing of an argumentative essay.

Type: Teaching Idea

The goal of the exemplar from Student Achievement Partner web resources is to give students practice in reading and writing about poetry. The poem makes connections to World War I as students closely analyze the poet's depiction of war. Students explore complex text through a) re-reading, paraphrasing, and discussing ideas, (b) achieving an accurate basic understanding of the stanzas of the poem, (c) achieving an accurate interpretive understanding of the piece, and (d) building a coherent piece of writing that both constructs and communicates solid understanding of the poem.

Type: Teaching Idea

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