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.
![Three educators smile while sitting together working.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2024-03/Facing-History_SJLA_015_edit.jpg?h=c7420dc8&itok=PlL1FQ9c)
Teaching Democracy and Freedom: Facing History’s Approach to US History
-
Boston, MA
Explore Facing History's new US History Curriculum Collection, which focuses on themes of Democracy and Freedom and provides resources for historical inquiry-based learning while developing students' civic agency. This event will be hosted in-person.
![Teacher gestures toward camera in professional development setting.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2023-03/8-10-17FacH09134.jpg?h=4362216e&itok=g0ZJn89w)
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.
![Student work together in class.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-09/Classroom_Discussion_Los_Angeles_SJLA_2018_FH287382.jpg?h=56d0ca2e&itok=--xgunus)
Coming of Age in a Complex World: A Mini-Course for ELA Educators
-
Explore hands-on strategies to teach coming-of-age texts and literature, centering students’ identities and lived experiences as young adults.
![A women concentrates at a table while working on a handout](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2023-11/Facing-History_SJLA_165.jpg?h=4362216e&itok=Ow7ferS5)
Teaching Strategies
Use our student-centered teaching strategies to strengthen your students’ literacy skills, nurture critical thinking, and build a respectful and collaborative classroom community.
![An educator walks through instructions for a teaching strategy procedure with students.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-08/Teaching_Strategies_hero.jpeg?h=78a3dfb3&itok=p8BXuMQa)
Expressing Diversity in Jewish Identity: Blending In and Standing Out
This two-day lesson uses the story of Purim as a frame to examine how Jews have preserved and protected their identities and culture in dominant societies by choosing when to blend in and when to stand out.
![A Jewish family pictured in Yemen](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2024-03/GettyImages-607446350.jpg?h=eec5a94e&itok=ZTRvXmoY)
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.
Developing Media Literacy for Well-being, Relationships, and Democracy: London
-
London, UK
Learn new approaches for developing students’ media literacy skills, and help them grow as critical consumers and creators of information. This event will be hosted in-person.
![Group Of Young Teen Using Mobile Phones.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2024-04/Making%20Caring%20Common_Guide%20to%20Online%20Hate%20Speech%20Cover.jpg?h=9d5da6b6&itok=KXktzkbq)
A Part and Apart: Inclusion and Exclusion in Our Jewish Communities
Students consider the benefits and challenges of identity labeling and their identity experiences within and outside their Jewish communities.
Indigenous Resistance, Resilience and Resurgence: The Role of Activism
-
Toronto, CA
Experience a holistic day of learning that brings together Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee stories, art, spoken word, connection to land, language rights and activism. This event will be hosted in-person.
![Quote reading "Power presents are and design works that reclaim the word’s primary associations with capitalism, state capitalism, colonialism, and neocolonial. The exhibiting artists and designers use their stirring creative practices to reposition the meaning of power as a strength grounded in respectful relationships, nonbinary worldviews, and emotional intelligence, embedded within practices of decolonization, Indigenization and other meaningful methods that decenter, Eurocentric, Western worldviews"](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2024-05/IMG_1676.jpg?h=1f8cbfdf&itok=QVBDbBIo)
Teaching Red Scarf Girl Workshop
Self-Paced Course
Virtual
This interactive self-paced workshop helps teachers develop a customized plan for teaching Red Scarf Girl informed by Facing History’s approach.
![A drawing of young children in China holding little red books in the air.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-08/RedScarfGirl_preview.png?h=52abab5c&itok=GXuIUI83)
Teaching for Equity and Justice in the Context of Jewish Education
Self-Paced Course
Virtual
This self-paced online workshop has been tailored specifically for educators in Jewish settings as they move to more equitable practices that enable all students to find their voice and civic agency, become critical thinkers, and be fully engaged in their education.
![Picture of students teamwork.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2023-03/09282018_Facing_History_Youth_Summit_%C2%A9Focht_236.jpg?h=c9f93661&itok=wmIhOYhd)