ELA Resources for Teachers
Explore our wide range of curricular resources and professional learning for secondary English Language Arts classrooms.
Our ELA resources integrate literacy skills development with social-emotional learning and civic education practices.
Professional Learning for ELA Educators
Explore a wide variety of professional learning experiences that support making the most of our English Language Arts curriculum.
Professional Learning for ELA Educators
Explore a wide variety of professional learning experiences that support making the most of our English Language Arts curriculum.
About Our ELA Resources
Designed for grades 6-12, our English Language Arts resources include a wide array of materials that will spark discussion and student engagement.
Our thematic collections feature text sets for multiple grade levels, unit planning guidance, classroom-ready handouts, and more.
We also offer teaching guides for a selection of longer works, poetry lessons, and teaching strategies that prioritize student writing and discussion.
Coming of Age in a Complex World
Developed for grades 6–12, this modular collection invites students to explore the complexity of identity and develop a sense of agency as they reflect on what it means to grow up in the world today.
Coming-of-Age Unit Planning Toolkit
This toolkit provides the framework and classroom resources to help you design a coming-of-age literature unit for middle or high school students using a book of your choosing.
Centering Student Voice and Choice: A Book Club Guide
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Implement book clubs that build community and help students make meaningful connections to books they are excited to read.
Whole-School Read Guide: Foster a Literacy Community
This planning guide will help you design and implement a Whole-School Read that centers students’ voices and experiences.
Teaching Night
This guide interweaves a literary analysis of Elie Wiesel’s powerful and poignant memoir with an exploration of the relevant historical context surrounding his experience during the Holocaust.
Teaching Mockingbird
Learn how to incorporate civic education, ethical reflection and historical context into a literary exploration of Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.
Teaching Brown Girl Dreaming
Teach a unit on Jacqueline Woodson's coming-of-age memoir in verse that invites students to reflect on their own experiences and identities.
Teaching Red Scarf Girl
Use this guide to Ji-li Jiang’s engaging memoir set during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution in China to help students explore themes of conformity, obedience, and prejudice.
Teaching Farewell to Manzanar
Use this guide to Jeanne Wakatsuki's memoir about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II to develop students' literacy skills and increase understanding of this history.
Teaching Warriors Don't Cry
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Use this guide to Melba Pattillo Beals' memoir about the desegregation of Little Rock High School to develop literacy skills and teach about the civil rights movement.
Teaching Enrique's Journey
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This guide provides activities and discussion questions for leading your students through a six-week reading of Enrique's Journey that explores themes of identity, belonging, and choices.
All-Community Read Guide: Being Heumann and Rolling Warrior
This planning guide will support your school community as you read the memoir of Judy Heumann, one of the most influential disability rights activists in US history.
Wonder: A Whole-School Read Planning Guide
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Get tips for planning your whole-school read of the young adult novel Wonder. This guide provides direction on how to structure classroom discussions and includes pre- and post-reading activities. It also features a "write your own precept" template for use in a final school-wide activity.
Learn about ordering our digital class sets to use in your classroom.
Explore
How to Bring Spoken Word Poetry into the Classroom
For National Poetry Month, introduce students to spoken word poetry and explore its power to give voice to issues that impact our communities.
Reflecting on Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb"
Use these activities to help students reflect on the themes in Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Day poem and consider how their unique experiences and voices can help America “forge a union with purpose.”
Hardship and Hope: Teaching Amanda Gorman’s “New Day’s Lyric”
This mini-lesson invites students to analyze Amanda Gorman’s poem “New Day’s Lyric” and create a class poem about hope and collective action during challenging times.
Sketch to Stretch
Ask students to visualize a passage of text and interpret it through drawing with this reading comprehension strategy.
Say Something
Encourage students to stop and engage with a text as they read with this comprehension strategy.
Levels of Questions
Educators will help students strengthen their literacy skills by increasing the complexity of the questions they need to answer about a text.
Rapid Writing
Help students unpack their responses to a text or video using this structured protocol that requires alternating between thinking and writing.
Journals in a Facing History Classroom
Educators will create a practice of student journaling to help their students critically examine their surroundings and make informed judgments.
Big Paper: Building a Silent Conversation
Students have a written conversation with peers and use silence as a tool to explore a topic in depth.
Socratic Seminar
A Socratic Seminar invites students to facilitate a discussion in order to work together toward a shared understanding of a text.
Concentric Circles
This kinesthetic discussion activity invites students to be active listeners and speakers and to interact with a wide range of classmates.
Four Corners
Get all students involved by asking them to show their stance on a statement through their positioning around the room.
Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World
Use text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world comparisons to help students connect ideas in a text to their own lives, current events, and history.
Connect, Extend, Challenge
Deepen students' understanding of a topic by having them connect to their prior knowledge.
Get Our ELA Newsletter
"What's the Word" is a monthly newsletter for English Language Arts educators. Get new resources, upcoming events, and professional learning delivered directly to you.
You might also be interested in…
Professional Learning for ELA Educators
Explore a wide variety of professional learning experiences that support making the most of our English Language Arts curriculum.
Teaching Coming-of-Age Literature
Facing History explores examples of coming-of-age literature and its connection to our resources.
Amp Up Reading in Your Classroom with Facing History’s Book Club Guide
Help your students engage with and enjoy reading with our updated Book Club Guide and professional learning webinar.
4 Tools for Teaching with Poetry
Facing History invites educators to weave poetry into classroom instruction using four of our teaching resources to shed light on historical and contemporary experiences and to help students process their own identities and emotions.
Elevating Student Voice Through Podcasting and Storytelling
In this interview with educator Molly Josephs, we explore how storytelling helps students find their unique voices & create connections across differences.
Building Belonging with New Classroom Activities for Back to School
Use our updated Back-to-School Toolkit to help you build community with students and lay the foundation for building a brave, inclusive classroom.
Creative Tips for Using Teaching Strategies
Learn how Facing History teachers have adapted our teaching strategies for their classrooms.
Cultivating Critical Consciousness in the Classroom
Education scholars Drs. Graves and Seider present insights on the importance of cultivating critical consciousness in the classroom.
Why and How to Teach Brown Girl Dreaming
Facing History offers an overview and guide for Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, an ideal book to teach in the middle school classroom.
What I've Learned Along the Way
After 25 years of distinguished service to our organization, Dr. Karen Murphy, Facing History’s Director of International Strategy, will join our partner organization High Resolves as CEO of an initiative called The Human Responsibility Accelerator. In this article, we invited Karen to share a bit of what she has learned in more than two decades at Facing History.
Holocaust Denial: How Teachers Can Turn the Tide
Research released by the Claims Conference found that 49% of U.S. millennials and generation Z have seen Holocaust denial or distortion content online—and that one in five U.S. millennials and generation Z surveyed in New York believe that Jews caused the Holocaust. This toxic combination of ignorance allied with antisemitic hatred continue to permeate global consciousness, and teachers have an important part to play in turning the tide.
7 Classroom Resources on the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is Thursday, January 27th. This is a day when we remember the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, their loved ones, and the ways in which this incalculable tragedy has transformed our world. It is also a time for educators to ensure their readiness to integrate instruction on the Holocaust into their annual teaching plans.
