ALEX Resources

Title: Guilty or Innocent?: A Case for Close Reading
Description: Students are drawn in by a classic story of guilt or innocence as they discover the Western town of Moon Dance, Montana, home of Al, a young man who begins to doubt the innocence of his mentor and father figure. Could Mr. Baumer be guilty of murder? Students are introduced to all the elements of a short story and forget that they are learning how to write an argumentative essay in their zeal to defend their opinion with evidence from the text. 
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 3:

Title: The Diary of Anne Frank: How Would I Survive?
Description: After reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Diary of Anne Frank, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, student groups examine the coping strategies of the people in the Secret Annex. Then, each student develops a personal survival plan to be included in a group slideshow presentation which addresses this question: How would I survive if I experienced the same stressful situation? Additionally, the students discuss current world situations that necessitate coping strategies.
Standard(s):
[TC2] (6-8) 12:

Title: Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator
Description: Students consider a variety of narrative stances in Edgar Allen Poe's short story, Tell Tale Heart, and Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. They examine how Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe used narration to create their intended effect in the reader.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 32:

Title: Can It Be?
Description: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from Illuminations, students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children s literature. They listen to the story The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and then explore and interpret the concept of averages.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

Title: Analyzing Advice as an Introduction to Shakespeare
Description: Popular culture provides an introduction to Shakespeare's poetic devices in this lesson, which asks students to explore an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

Title: Promoting Diversity in the Classroom and School Library through Social Action
Description: Students explore the effects of stereotypes by analyzing children's books. Then they create bookmarks that encourage readers to question the assumptions of stereotyped books and to seek out matching, balanced texts.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 41:

Title: Poems That Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Description: In this four-lesson unit, from EDSITEment, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this unit encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather evidence supporting those inferences.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29:

Title: The Big Bad Wolf: Analyzing Point of View in Texts
Description: Was the Big Bad Wolf really all that bad? This lesson encourages students to analyze multiple viewpoints, view texts from different angles, and recognize gaps in narrative.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 23:

Title: The Pied Piper led the children out of Hamelin in 1376.
Description: After listening to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents , students compare Pratchett's version with Browning's version and discuss how perspective changes the story.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (12) 7: