English Language Arts Grade 11-12 [2011]

• Character Analysis and The Crucible
  This set of lessons extends over several weeks and incorporates all acts of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. Students will closely read The Crucible. Students will cite textual evidence and make interpretations about character development.

  Students will combine the textual evidence with their interpretations and write interpretive statements. In the culminating activity, students will write a character analysis.

• Claims in ”The Crisis, No. 1”
  This set of lessons extends over several days and focuses on "The Crisis, No. 1" by Thomas Paine. Students closely read and annotate the text. Students identify and evaluate claims and evidence in the text. Students present their findings to the class. Finally, students collaboratively write short arguments identifying claims and evidence in "The Crisis, No. 1." Students present their arguments to the class, and the class discusses and assesses the arguments.
• Classical Appeals and War Speeches
  This set of lessons extends over several days. Students watch a Prezi and take notes about the classical appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos). Students then read and annotate (focusing on the classical appeals) Winston Churchill's "Be Ye Men of Valour" and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation." Students work in groups to complete a graphic organizer which helps them analyze the classical appeals in the speeches. Finally, students write an analysis of ethos, pathos, and logos in one of the speeches.

  *You may want to use my Structure and Detail in "A Long Thin Line" - English 11 lesson as a follow-up lesson.

• Structure and Detail in ”A Long Thin Line”
  This set of lessons extends over a few days. Students read and annotate Ernie Pyle's "A Long Thin Line of Anguish." Students complete a SAYS/DOES graphic organizer, working on summarizing the text, noticing the choices the author makes about use of details, and describing the choices the author makes regarding the structure of the article.

  Students complete a SOAPStone handout, identifying subject, occasion, author, purpose, speaker and tone (SOAPStone is a pre-AP/AP strategy). Students develop claims about why Ernie Pyle makes the writing choices he makes. Students write an informal, free-response style assessment about the impact of Pyle's choices.

• Summary and ”The Fallacy of Success”
  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.

• Kennewick Man: Science and Sacred Rights
  This lesson plan explores the controversy surrounding "Kennewick Man", the name given to a skeleton discovered near Kennewick, Washington, in July 1996. Learning objectives include (1) To learn about the discovery of Kennewick Man and what this ancient skeleton suggests about the earliest inhabitants of North America; (2) To examine the controversy surrounding Native American efforts to rebury Kennewick Man in accordance with their traditions and federal law; (3) To explore the relationship between science and religion as reflected in their shared concern about human origins; (4) To gain experience in the close analysis of argument.
• Perspective on the Slave Narrative
  This lesson plan introduces students to one of the most widely-read genres of 19th-century American literature and an important influence within the African American literary tradition even today. The lesson focuses on the Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave (1847), which, along with the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), set the pattern for this genre and its combination of varied literary traditions and devices. To help students recognize the complex nature of the slave narrative, the lesson explores Brown's work from a variety of perspectives.