Lesson Plans -> English Language Arts -> Handouts
Here you will find Mr. Soule's and my handouts, short texts, and organizers for our co-created unit plan surrounding Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Each of these is meant to help students connect with the text, use the skills they gain from reading the text in real life, and allow students the freedom to explore different ways of reading and writing this canonical play.
Unfortunately, English does not have a formal 2nd person plural form, which makes talking to groups of people difficult to accomplish. Please also note that the gender neutral 3rd person singular is Ze/Zir/Zirs. This is one of many possibilities. For more information on gender neutral pronouns meant for persons (instead of objects), please visit here.
This organizer is adapted from Scholastic's inferences from poetry organizer. Students tend to understand ways to use this handout better when it has been filled out with a text they have read and discussed, before attempting to apply it to a new text. I have successfully used this handout with short stories and passages from longer texts, so please feel free to adapt it to whichever text your students are using at the time.
The skeleton of this poem is meant to get to know different aspects of a student or character. If there are other things you'd like to know about a student or character, amend the stems. Ms. Baker and I found that more than six lines tended to overwhelm students, so keep that in mind if you change it up a bit!
The class in which Ms. Hlywa and I implemented this lesson had many students who had difficulty remembering verbal instructions. Therefore, this handout has each question we'd ask aloud. Students in this class could then follow along more easily and engage with the lesson. If students in another class do not need this extra support, feel free to take out the questions from the handout.