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
This modular ELA collection for grades 7–12 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 today’s complex, interconnected world.
Borders & Belonging
This modular ELA collection for grades 7–12 invites students to explore the complicated world of belonging and the tangible and intangible borders that shape it.
Teaching Holocaust Literature
This resource collection for ELA grades 7-12 supports planning and implementing a Holocaust literature unit that engages the head, heart, and conscience.
ELA Unit Planning Guide
This guide provides the framework and classroom resources to help you design an English Language Arts unit for middle or high school students centered around a book of your choosing.
Teach with Facing History ELA Learning Experiences
Each of our learning experiences provides activities and resources to explore a core Facing History concept or theme while building key literacy skills.
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.
Back to School: Building Community for Connection and Learning
These back-to-school activities and teacher resources will help you lay a foundation for a reflective and caring community at the start of the school year.
Teaching Other Words for Home
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Jasmine Warga’s verse novel about 7th-grade Syrian refugee Jude’s journey with her mother to the United States.
Teaching The Distance Between Us
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Reyna Grande’s memoir about her childhood in Mexico and life as an undocumented child in Los Angeles.
Teaching Some Places More Than Others
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Renée Watson’s novel about a young girl determined to discover who she is, where she comes from, and where she belongs.
Teaching Home Is Not a Country
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Safia Elhillo’s verse novel that explores the complexity of third-culture identity and experiences through magical realism.
Teaching Borderless
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Jennifer De Leon’s novel about Guatemalan high-schooler Maya as she navigates unimaginable dilemmas.
Teaching Call Me American
This planning guide supports reading and discussion of Abdi Nor Iftin’s memoir about his journey through civil war in Somalia and emigration to the US.
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
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
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
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 the Classroom
Create a practice of student journaling to help your 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.
Coming of Age in a Complex World: A Mini-Course for ELA Educators
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Virtual
Explore hands-on strategies to teach coming-of-age texts and literature, centering students’ identities and lived experiences as young adults.
Culturally Responsive Texts with Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul
On-Demand
Virtual
In this webinar Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul discussed the necessity of culturally responsive texts in ELA classrooms.
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"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.
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Professional Learning for ELA Educators
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Teaching Coming-of-Age Literature
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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.
#MeToo Past and Present: 3 New Books on Challenging Gender Violence
Facing History summarizes three new books that have been released in the last year that address the ongoing struggle of women against gender violence.
5 New YA Books on Women's History
Facing History provides a list of five YA titles that have been released in the last year that make important themes in women’s history and contemporary life accessible to young readers.
5 New Books on Women's History for 2022
Facing History shares five books that have been released in the last year that address important themes in women’s history.
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