Nathan Shields

Greek Mythology comes alive when students work through the Graphic Novel of The Lightning Thief. I originally created this unit for my 7th grade ELD class, but the students in my mainstream ELA-7 course love it too! The handouts are easy to follow as we navigate through the Graphic Novel. In addition to normal skills covered in common book lessons, in this unit every section cycles through these specific skills (so that students really grasp them by the end): Allusion, Inference, Foreshado

My students loved this movie, and this handout helped them make connections to the original play that we read in class. (Because this is an amazingly well-done movie, this handout worked over the years for my honors classes, my mainstream classes, my ELD classes, and my Reading Intervention classes)

This bundle includes an abridged text of The Odyssey, a WebQuest and reading guide for a comic version of The Iliad, a reading schedule, book quizzes, a unit test, a license plate activity, a full movie-viewing unit for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and tips for how I use all of these to engage students in this amazing story.

This unit is for Malala Yousafzai's engaging autobiography Malala: My Story of Standing UP for Girls' Rights, adapted by Sarah J. Robbins. It includes Introduction Activities, Chapter Quizzes, and after-reading Activities. But a unique feature is the Vocabulary (through structured Bell-Ringers), and also the Summarizing routine (Somebody Wanted But So - Then).

This is an abridged version of To Kill a Mockingbird that I use with my Reading Intervention 9th grade class. The Reading Questions are in 3 separate packets, so while you may be checking and scoring each chapter as you go along, you can wait to enter a single grade after each packet.

These are all great stand-alone videos for Greek Mythology (over 40 different videos). But they were clipped specifically for my " Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief Graphic Novel" unit. Check that one out. All of these videos can be found for FREE on youtube.com. I edited every single video to be appropriate for my 7th grade classroom unit (and those are linked throughout the Graphic Novel unit). But because I didn’t create the original videos, I’m offering my video edits for free, and I als

Quiz Questions for every book in The Odyssey and a final unit test. There are also tips for how I conduct these quizzes in a way that increases accountability while lessening the teacher's work load.

No exaggeration. This is THE GREATEST structure for students to learn Greek and Roman roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Don't believe me? Download my "Preview" to get the first Unit for free to try with your students (5 weeks worth). It starts with a clear handout that earns 2 stamps, and it finishes online with repetitive practice that requires students to earn mastery before unlocking the next item. The handout provides "quick wins" for students. The online piece provides accountability to actua

This is a "Stepping-Up" abridged version of the text: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. This is NOT a modern translation (which loses the genius of the original language). Also, this is NOT the original text... but it is very close to it. This version allows students to STEP-UP to the original. Over 95% of the original text is still here, and any changes are in italics. The only parts I changed were those that were unnecessary obstacles to students understanding the text. In fact, I care so mu

Multiple Choice Quizzes, LitTerms handouts, Escape Room, and Movie Guides (The movie guides are for both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire movies... everything else is just for The Hunger Games). Quizzes and Movie Guides are in English and Spanish.

These lessons/activities are for the very adapted Read 180 version of Romeo and Juliet. I used this as a core text for my Read 180 classes, and students LOVED reading different roles out loud as we worked through this version of the classic text.

This is not a full-immersion “Escape Room” that you might spend lots of money engaging in for your 30th Birthday party down-town. This is a streamlined version that you can do in a classroom where every group is able to work their way through each piece to get the key to “unlock” each lock. While there is not a lot of physical movement out of their seats, there is a LOT of collaboration, some physical papers, and loads of thinking involved throughout the tasks. (It lasts about 20 minutes)

Swing Kids is a movie that follows a tight group of German teenagers in the late 1930s who are naturally rebellious in a country that does not tolerate dissent. Of course a viewing guide is a way to keep students accountable for watching a movie... but this is such an engaging movie, that accountability isn't really necessary. So THIS viewing guide was created in such a way that will help students keep up with the different storylines of the various characters. Feel free to pause after a few que

The Reading Questions are in 3 separate packets (the first packet is in the Preview here). The three packets are structure for you to check and score each chapter as a class as you go along, you can wait to enter a single grade after each packet (this results in each packet affecting a student's grade more -- increasing accountability -- but you also only need to enter three Reading Scores for the whole story). While these questions will work with the original novel, they were specifically cre

This is not a full-immersion “Escape Room” that you might spend lots of money engaging in for your 30th Birthday party down-town. This is a streamlined version that you can do in a classroom where every group is able to work their way through each piece to get the key to “unlock” each lock. While there is not a lot of physical movement out of their seats, there is a LOT of collaboration, some physical papers, and loads of thinking involved throughout the tasks. (It lasts about 20 minutes)

This bundle includes the full unit plans and handouts... and it includes the "Stepping-Up" text that really IS the version you want to put in front of your students.

GoogleDocs and GoogleForms: 5 multiple-choice questions for each chapter. These are split into 3 chapters at a time, so there are nine 15-question quizzes on individual GoogleDocs and on GoogleForms. Every question and answer is already formatted into English and Spanish, so English and Spanish speaking students can access the same document.

I use this movie as an introduction to the ideas in our dystopian unit. This PG movie is only 90 minutes long, and so the questions are divided up into 30 minute sections. While the multiple-choice questions are just a simple way to help students follow the plot, the open-ended questions are an easy way to get student to begin thinking about the bigger ideas presented in stories like The Hunger Games.

Included in this complete and full unit are... Pre-Unit activities: Background Lecture, Anticipation Guide, Mini-lessons on a Shakespearean Sonnet (with Video examples) Activities while reading the text: Act Quizzes, Study Guides for each Act, Targeted Vocabulary lists and Quizzes for each Act After reading the text: Essay Options (with Peer Edit handout), Unit Test, Movie-watching Chart

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an engaging movie that is a retelling of many of the plot events in The Odyssey. This purchase includes: -a simple "Viewing Guide" for the movie -a simple "Reflection Handout" analyzing the differences between the epic and the movie -a fun "Bridge Map" for groups to compare how different Odyssey elements were presented in the movie -a "Teacher Tips" page where I briefly explain how I move through these lessons