This video features a project in which eleventh grade students at High Tech High Media Arts created a book of essays inspired by their work in a community internship. The process of creating high-quality narrative writing—meeting and exceeding standards—is highlighted. Students used models from the professional literary world; each student chose a particular literary influence to guide his or her style. The class worked as team in a collaborative editing process. The film celebrates the connection of school to life, and the power of inspiration, models, critique and collaboration.

This course introduces students to the writing process as a means of developing ideas into clear, correct, and effective writing.

In this lesson students will read and analyze “The Flowers” by Alice Walker. Lesson 2 from the Author’s Craft unit focuses on diction. Students will examine how Walker’s word choice creates tonal shifts in the story that support the theme. The lesson requires student to collect evidence, discuss, and complete a writing assignment in which they continue the story while using diction to maintain the tone. Image source: "Rose" by Kapa65 on Pixabay.com.

What was life like for women in the first half of the 19th century in America? What influence did women have in shaping the attitudes towards slavery? Towards women's suffrage?

Using the theme of identity, students will work through various activities to learn the characteristics of a Narrative Essay. This particular unit will/should take place prior to writing the Narrative Essay. Many of the lessons address how to identify, create, apply and analyzeheme, dialogue punctuation, figurative language and citing direct and indirect evidence.

After analyzing photojournalist James Karales's iconic photograph of the march, reading background material on it, and considering what the marchers might have thought and felt, students write and illustrate a postcard describing this civil rights event from a marcher's viewpoint.

Lesson OverviewIn this lesson, students will be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's theory on the “single effect” of the short story. They will read a passage from Poe as well as his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”Lesson PreparationRead the lesson and student content.Anticipate student difficulties and identify the differentiation options you will choose for working with your students.Decide how you will put students in pairs for the lesson's tasks.

This lesson is designed to apply Common Core State Standards and facilitate a comparison of informational texts and primary source material from the Scottsboro Boys trials of the 1931 and 1933, and the fictional trial in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960).

This activity teaches students about the setting of Harper Lee’s famous novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which takes place during 3 years (1933–1935) of the Great Depression. Part 1 of this activity can be used before students start reading the novel to help them understand what life was like in the 1930s. In this part, students will examine and answer questions about census documents that feature unemployment numbers and related information. Part 2 can be completed after students have read the first few chapters of the novel. In this part, students will write a piece using the RAFT technique (role, audience, format, topic) to show what they learned about the 1930s and what they have read so far.