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.

After students learn how jobs are selected in The Giver, they will critically analyze if they would like that process from themselves. Then they will observe classmates to determine an appropriate job for them. Once students receive their jobs for their classmates, they will reflect on the process.

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

An adaptable writing frame for teacher to comments; self evaluation and an indicator of whether the work was independent, shared or teacher assisted etc.

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.

For this lesson, students will learn how to pick a topic for a research paper. They will then think of questions they want to answer in their research paper, and use those questions to guide what they take notes on. A detailed PowerPoint explains how to use PowerPoint to organize and take notes.

In this curriculum unit, students will learn about the origins of four major types of British surnames. They will consult lists to discover the meanings of specific names and later demonstrate their knowledge of surnames through various group activities. They will then compare the origins of British to certain types of non-British surnames. In a final activity, the students will research the origins and meanings of their own family names.