People may participate in politics in many ways. They can write their Representative or Senator, or work in for a candidate or political party. They can make presentations to their local school board or city council, or call the police to complain about the neighbor's dog. Partly because of our federalist system, people have many opportunities to participate in our democracy on federal, state, and local levels. Some forms of participation are more common than others and some citizens participate more than others, but almost everyone has a voice in government.

In this three week unit, students will practice skills related to argumentative writing. They will ultimately write an argumentative/persuasive letter to the school board regarding school safety policy.

In this lesson, students use the lyrics to "Something Like This" as an opportunity to learn the stories of Achilles, Hercules, Wonder Woman and Superman. Students will explore similarities between these gods and superheroes, finally considering why mortals still need superhumans, thousands of years later.

This lesson introduces the Arts, A/V Technology, and Communications career cluster to middle school students. It incorporates literacy, Michigan career readiness model, speaking & listening, and writing. It also makes a great sketchnote activity.

For this lesson, students will learn how to cite in-text in MLA. They will watch a video, be directed to an easy to understand web page with citation examples, and even be able to complete a worksheet on citing in-text in MLA. Once students are done with this lesson, they will be ready to cite in-text in their own research paper.

The goal of this assignment is for students to write an editorial, either by themselves or with a partner. This topic will be something they are interested in or passionate about and hold a particular opinion that they wish to share with others. The learning cycle will focus on students exploring topics and finding one they hold an opinion about. Further points of the cycle will involve students learning about various methods of persuasion and how to find evidence to support their position.

Students will understand that applying the various Elements of Geography helps us to understand our past.  By exploring the World in Spatial Terms, Places and Regions, Physical Systems, Human Systems, and Environment and Society, we can use Geography to comprehend the issues of history, identify where events took place, what those places were like, how the places changed over time, and how people thought of the world at different times.

In this lesson, students, working with their empire teams, will negotiate a treaty.

For this lesson, students will learn how to write a mystery. They will be given a list of Nursery Rhymes and asked to create a mystery from the Nursery Rhyme. For example, Did Humpty Dumpty really fall off the wall or was he pushed? They will create a comic from their mystery.

Using the topic of Mythology, 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 analyze point of view, theme, dialogue punctuation, argumenative qualities and citing direct and indirect evidence.

After students have read Out of the Dust, they will create a Glogster. They will write about the theme, use their vocabulary words in writing, write using similes, metaphors, and personification in poetry, compare and contrast Billie Jo's experience to someone else in history, and be able to pick an option from a list. They will use their creativity to make their poster appealing to the reader.

For these lessons, students will be taken through a variety of activities to learn about plagiarism. They will learn what plagiarism is, the consequence for it, how to paraphrase writing, when to use direct quotes, and how to cite. This is a wonderful webquest for students to go through.

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspirations to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that raises questions about for whom the "American Dream" is accessible.

The Superhero Unit - Comics in the Classroom includes individual detailed lesson plans. This is a unit based on comic books. There are a range of writing activities: short story; informative; biography and comic strips. Included is a selection of power-points to use in lessons

For this assignment, students will learn about the difference between mood and tone in writing. They will watch a video explaining the difference, work through a website with words writers would use to convey tone or mood, and end with an assignment where they will describe the tone or mood in pictures and passages from books.