Connecticut State Department of Education

Connecticut Core Standards

Lesson Plans - English Language Arts 

Lesson Plans for Grades K-5

Grade Title
K Chrysanthemum
K Diego Rivera – His World and Ours by Duncan Tonatiuh
K Writing for Understanding - You Can't Taste a Pickle with Your Ear
K Daisy Comes Home (Herschbach)
K Taking Care of Business
K ABC Text-plorers
K Retelling Familiar Stories that Include Key Details
K-1 My Family's Journey!
K-2 Illuminated Calligrams
K-2 I Spy Irises
K-2 Action ABC's - Learning Vocabulary with Verbs
K-2 The Wind by James Reeves
1 A Close Reading of Little Bear's Friend
1 “The Mysterious Tadpole” by Steven Kellogg
1 Text Detectives Investigate Meat Eating Plants
1 Construct a Boat & Make it Float – Construction, Trial and Error, and Boat Revisions
1 A Chilly Feeling
1 Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg
1 Determining the Central Message or Lesson of a Story
1 Julius Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
2 Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor
2 Sit-In – How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney
2 "Cendrillon" – A Carribean Cinderella by Robert D. San Souci
2 The Star by Jane Taylor
2 A Butterfly is Patient
2 The Rooster, the Mouse, and the Little Red Hen
2 Close Reading - Charlie Anderson
2 Let’s Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
3-5 The Water Cycle
3 City, City: A Comparison
3 Elena’s Serenade
3 A Close Reading of The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco
3 Close Reading Literature - “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”
3 Writing Opinion Essays in Response to “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”
3 Text Evidence to Support an Argument (Hayes)
3 Close Examination of a Complex Text - Because of Winn Dixie
3 A Bad Case of Bullying - Using Literature Response Groups
4 Character Super Sleuths
4 Close Reading - Lou Gehrig
4 Opinion Writing
4 “Children at Sea?”
4 “The Legend of the First Fire”
4 Close Reading of The Life and Times of the Ant
4 Determining a Theme and Summarizing Stories, Poems, and Plays
4 Applying Question-Answer Relationships to Pictures
5 Exploring Young Immigrant Stories
5 The Gymnast
5 Benjamin Franklin: Inventor, Printer, Writer
5 Close Reading – The Serum Run to Nome
5 And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? by Jean Fritz
5 Alter Egos and More with Avi’s Who Was that Masked Man, Anyway?

Lesson Plans for Grades 6-8

Grade Title
6 Bee Tongues Shrinking
6 The Black Ships Before Troy – The Story of the Iliad – excerpt from The Golden Apple
6 Counting down from 11 - Analysis of Point of View in “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros
6 The Bears of Yellowstone National Park
6 “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury
6 Close Reading - The Great Fire by Jim Murphy
7 “Child Soldiers - Analysis of News Articles (Lesson #1)
7 “A Retrieved Reformation” by O. Henry – Inference and Evidence
7 Current Events in Africa
7 Mark Twain-The Glorious Whitewasher
7-8 Can Dogs Smell Cancer?
8 “1984” by George Orwell with Mini-assessment
8 Writing an Objective Summary (Abby Sparrow)
8 A Letter to Harriet Tubman
8 The Landlady by Roald Dahl, a Close Reading
8 “In Response to Executive Order 9066 – All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Center”
8 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Written by Himself

Lesson Plans for Grades 9-12

Grade Title
9 Communicating on Local Issues - Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing
9-10 Should the United States Have Entered World War I?
9-10 An Introduction with Death: A Close Reading of the Prologue from The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
9-12 How Will Human Rights Play Out with Changing Demographics?
9-12 How Does Immigration Shape the Nation’s Identity?
9-12 The Little Rock Nine and the Children’s Movement
9-12 For the Sake of Argument - Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials
9-12 Literary Parodies - Exploring a Writer’s Style through Imitation
11 “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard (Close Reading Lesson)
11 Andrew Carnegie – “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889) – A Close Reading
11-12 A Need for Sleep: A Close Reading of a Soliloquy from King Henry IV, Part ll
11-12 Teaching About Children’s Rights Through the Work of Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi
11-12 Learning from Disaster—Exploring the Ebola Epidemic
11-12 I Am an American Day by Learned Hand