With so many people getting their news from their social media newsfeed, how can they evaluate what is good and what might be fake? With the help of a Youtube video on the subject, student do some evaluating. This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?"

In this lesson, students will learn about a topic in three different text formats. They will then evaluate each format to determine the pros and cons. Students will also assess the credibility of each text.

In this unit students explore immigration by reading a series of narrative nonfiction and fiction texts that highlight the experiences of early and recent immigrants. In the first part of the unit students are pushed to notice and think about the different reasons people choose to leave their homes and settle in a new community or country. Students will then be pushed to think about the different memories, cultural traits, goods, ideas, languages, and skills that individuals and families bring with them when they move to a new place and how these characteristics enrich the community. While students are exposed to a wide variety of immigrant experiences over the course of the unit, not every experience or feeling about immigration is captured in this unit. Because many of our students are first- or second-generation immigrants, it is crucial to be sensitive to and respect the varying experiences and feelings of our students and families. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others, will help students build sensitivity and empathy for varying cultures and experiences within the United States.

In this unit students explore immigration by reading a series of narrative nonfiction and fiction texts that highlight the experiences of early and recent immigrants. In the first part of the unit students are pushed to notice and think about the different reasons people choose to leave their homes and settle in a new community or country. Students will then be pushed to think about the different memories, cultural traits, goods, ideas, languages, and skills that individuals and families bring with them when they move to a new place and how these characteristics enrich the community. While students are exposed to a wide variety of immigrant experiences over the course of the unit, not every experience or feeling about immigration is captured in this unit. Because many of our students are first- or second-generation immigrants, it is crucial to be sensitive to and respect the varying experiences and feelings of our students and families. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others, will help students build sensitivity and empathy for varying cultures and experiences within the United States.

In this unit, students study the rovers Spirit and Opportunity and their remarkable missions to Mars. Through a combination of reading, analyzing images and photographs, and participating in engineering and design labs, students will begin to understand the complexity, preparation, and diligence involved in space missions. Students will grapple with why the engineering and design process, particularly continually planning, trying, and evaluating, is a crucial part of a successful mission. This unit also allows students to make connections between content learned in math and content learned in previous science units, solidifying the importance and value of STEM. It is our hope that this unit inspires students to explore engineering and STEM not only in space but in the world around them.

In this unit, students build their skills in consuming scientific and technical texts. Students will practice explaining the connection between two or more scientific ideas or concepts in a text. Additionally, students will be challenged to draw on and integrate information from two or more texts in order to describe a scientific idea, concept, or process in depth. This unit also continues the study of point of view and analyzing how the point of view influences what and how information is presented to a reader. The Mighty Mars Rover is written to captivate and engage a reader, while the NASA press releases are written to inform the public of the progress and findings of the Mars rover missions. Students will be challenged to compare and contrast the point of view of each text and the strategies each author uses based on the point of view and desired audience. Since this is the culminating unit of the course, all other informational standards will be spiraled throughout the unit.

Formulating, organizing, and presenting ideas clearly in writing. Reviews basic principles of rhetoric. Focuses on development of a topic, thesis, choice of appropriate vocabulary, and sentence structure to achieve purpose. Develops idiomatic prose style. Gives attention to grammar and vocabulary usage. Special focus on strengthening skills of bilingual students. Successful completion satisfies Phase I of the Writing Requirement. The purpose of this course is to develop your writing skills so that you can feel confident writing the essays, term papers, reports, and exams you will have to produce during your career here at MIT. We will read and analyze samples of expository writing, do some work on vocabulary development, and concentrate on developing your ability to write clear, accurate, sophisticated prose. We will also deal with the grammar and mechanical problems you may have trouble with.

Eleventh grade students in Portland, ME, created documentary films to highlight the human impact of Hurricane Sandy on residents of Rockaway, NY; they also did service work restoring homes and businesses. Connected to a larger study of climate change. Explores the power of narrative to effect change in students and the world. Illuminates CCSS ELA standard W.11-12.3.

"Focus on 'Henry V'" is a peer-reviewed, multimedia, digital Open Educational Resource co-authored and co-produced by faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates on the innovative digital publishing platform Scalar. Chapters include guides to early printed editions, sources, and performance and cinematic histories of the play, as well as teaching resources and in-depth case-studies of particular scenes. All chapters include rich multimedia and audio recordings of body text and image captions. In addition to a traditional Table of Contents, the digital book allows users to navigate the materials through multiple pathways and visualizations. In this way the book offers not only a cutting-edge, renewable OER for college and K-12 teachers but also a model for maximizing the affordances of the digital medium.

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries chose "post-truth" as the word of the year. As literacy has shifted from published hardcopy to an online landscape, it is more important than ever to engage and empower students in navigating the complicated battleground of fake news versus responsible, fact-based news. In this multi-day lesson, students will 1) examine terms associated with “fake news” and evaluate sources for their reliability and authenticity, and 2) develop a set of norms for responsible use of online news sources that spans academic and personal interaction with media.

Module 2: Students will explore persuasive writing about foods and restaurants. They will also start on their independent opinion writing- to persuade readers to try a favorite (ethnic) food/ restaurant. Please note that this particular Roadmap is a self-directed, project-based extension to a curriculum arc focused on the notion of food as central to our culture.

In this unit students begin to explore the concepts of fairness and justice. Over the course of the unit students are exposed to numerous ordinary people who worked together to overcome injustice and fight for a better future for others. Students will grapple with what it means if something is fair and just, particularly in regard to race, class, gender, and ability. Then students will be challenged to think about the different ways in which people showed courage, patience, and perseverance in order to challenge things that were fundamentally unfair. Over the course of the unit it is our hope that students are able to acknowledge and realize that things aren't always fair in the world around them, but that doesn't mean that it always has to be that way. It is our hope that students see that identifying the problem is only the first step and that anyone who has the right mindset and beliefs can inspire others to work together to create a more just future for everyone. Essentially, we hope that this unit begins to plant the seed within our students that they can be activists and take charge of their own lives and communities. No one is too young to inspire change. It is important to note that this unit primarily focuses on big-scale changes. Additional projects and lessons should be added to help students understand how what they learned connects to change on a smaller scale. In reading, students will continue to work on developing their informational reading strategies, particularly when reading a collection of narrative nonfiction texts. The focus of this unit is on reinforcing and practicing targeted informational strategies in the context of a narrative structure. In particular, students will be pushed to describe the connection between individuals, events, and pieces of information. Students will also be challenged to think about the reasons an author gives to support a point and how those reasons look slightly different in a narrative informational text than in a scientific or history-based informational text. In writing, students will continue to work on writing responses to the text that provide relevant and accurate information along with some evidence of inferential or critical thinking.

In this unit students study the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of the youth and children who experienced the struggles, hardships, victories, defeats, and possibilities firsthand. Students will be challenged to analyze the key characteristics shared by children who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly their courage, commitment, bravery, and unending commitment to fighting for the cause. Over the course of the unit students will realize that through community organizing and a strong desire for justice, regular people, especially youth, were able to come together to use a variety of nonviolent tactics to fight for change, even when faced with resistance, oppression, and violence on a daily basis. The stories and experiences in the unit will highlight that the Civil Rights Movement was driven by the heroism of regular people and that anyone can participate in the fight against injustice. It is our hope that this unit, in conjunction with other units from the sequence, will empower students to notice and challenge the injustices, relying on their knowledge of history and the lessons they’ve learned from those who have fought before them.

In this unit students refine their skills as critical consumers of texts by analyzing the point of view from which a text is written and noticing how the point of view influences what and how information is presented to a reader. Students will read multiple accounts of the same topic or event and be challenged to notice the similarities and differences in the points of view they represent and how the author uses evidence and reasons to support a particular point of view. Photographs are an important part of the texts in the unit. Students will be pushed to analyze photographs as a source of information to support an author’s point. Students will also continue to practice determining one or more main ideas of a text and explaining how they are supported by key details, summarizing a text, and explaining the relationship between one or more events or individuals in a historical text. Over the course of the unit students will also be required to access information from multiple sources in order to integrate information and draw conclusions about an event or topic.

This video is part of the Learn and Grow with WHRO TV series. Watch Alystra Barefoot teach about setting up a learning journal.

Students will be involved in a group research of "How to" books and videos.  Then, they will create their own "How to" writing using See Saw as their on-line creation "house".  Students will work in collaborative groups during the entire process and learn how to complete the task as a team.  Students will be given daily feedback from their teacher as well as final peer and teacher feedback.

Students enter our classrooms with their own background experiences and knowledge, this unit allows them to dig deeper in one area of expertise to teach the reader "How To" perform a task.

Students read literary and informational texts about knowledge and intelligence to understand what happens when humans try to manipulate the minds of others and how our understanding of intelligence has evolved over time. Students express their understanding of these ideas by exploring how authors draw on traditional stories and develop characters and themes to teach us about ourselves and others.

This unit asks students to consider the permissible restrictions schools can place on students’ freedom of speech, as they learn about the (fictional, but realistic) case of Davis v. Ann Arbor School Board. Students will either conduct a mock negotiation in which they will try to resolve a First Amendment-related conflict between a student and his public high school, or a mock argument in which they will argue for one side in front of a panel of student judges.

This Unit contains 9 lessons:
Lesson 1: Are schools permitted to limit students’ First Amendment freedom of speech?
Lesson 2: Under what circumstances may a school punish student speech?
Lesson 3: How does the law apply to our case?
Lesson 4: What are the key elements of negotiation?
Lesson 5: How can parties use negotiation to achieve the best solution?
Lesson 6: Is negotiation an effective tool in the legal process?
Lesson 7: What is a mock argument?
Lesson 8: How do I prepare for a mock argument?
Lesson 9: How do attorneys conduct oral arguments to advocate for their clients?

Through most of U.S. history, women had limited access to educational programs and extracurricular activities. Most women were excluded from elite academic institutions, and those schools that accepted female applicants required them to have higher test scores and grades than their male counterparts. In the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights activists advocated for federal enforcement of equal opportunities for male and female students. In response, Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This unit asks students to consider the scope and application of Title IX through the examination of statutory text, federal regulations, enforcement policies, and court decisions. Students are guided to confront questions about how the provisions of Title IX ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of gender, and to think about what sex equality means across different contexts.

This unit contains 5 lessons:
Lesson 1: Conceptualizing Equality and Non-Discrimination
Lesson 2: Analyzing Title IX and Athletics
Lesson 3: Applying Title IX Beyond Sports
Lesson 4: Applying Title IX
Lesson 5: Reshaping Title IX

Students present and receive feedback about their Genius Hour plans using a gallery walk-style approach.