The beginning of the school year is hard and wonderful at the same time. Teachers and students are so lucky because we get two opportunities a year to experience the invigoration of a new year and opportunities to think about how to recreate ourselves and be better. Here are 5 Back to School Units for High School English that you really can use at any point during the year.
Back to School Units for High School English
One of the great things about being an English teacher is that you have lots of opportunities to get to know your kids through their reading and writing. So these first day of school lessons plans for high school English are heavy in the SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and get to know you activities. But another thing that is great about being an English teacher is that at any point in the year, you can do a refresh with your students. So these ideas are perfect for back to school, but you really could use them anytime you need to reconnect with your students.
Back to School Unit One: Names (1-5 lessons)
A Little About the Why:
One of my favorite back to school units for high school English is the Hello My Name Is Mini Unit. I totally relate to Esperanza’s plight in The House on Mango Street (by Sandra Cisneros) when she talks about her name being too long. Like Esperanza, my first name is also 9 letters (oh and add 10 for McLaughlin and my name doesn’t fit on one line on my driver’s license!).
For years, I used this story as a way to teach parody. Students would use Cisneros’s structure as a guide and then write their own piece. But more recently found the Jacquelyn Woodson poem, “a girl named jack” where she talks about the origin of her name as well as the excerpt from The Secret Life of Addie LaRue in which the narrator talks about the power of names. These both complement “My Name” so well, it just makes sense to take a couple more days on the unit and give more options.
Texts
“My Name” by Sandra Cisenros; “a girl named jack” by Jacquelyn Woodson; excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (beginning of chapter 1 starting with “HIs name is Toby…” to “… her fingers fall away from the glass…”)
Skills and/or Terms
Two Part Annotations: Have students divide their paper into two columns (1/3–2/3 split). On the left side, students write a summary of the passage. On the right side, they can note author moves like figurative language, diction, or details.
Research and MLA: You can have students look up the meaning of their names or interview a family member to find out why they have the name they have which allows you to sneak in some MLA skills like citing a source, embedding quotes or MLA structure.
Writing
Have student look up the meaning of their names and/or explore the origin of their names. Then write a short piece about their name which can be a parody of either “My Name” or “a girl named jack” or it can be a free form poem or prose passage or a brief research paper.
Why it is great
This is an easy way to start the year. It allows you to get to know a little about your kids and what they think about themselves. It gives kids an opportunity to think about their names and what they mean to them. You can throw in a touch of research and hide some of those other writing skills into a less intimidating assignment.
Grab the My Name is Unit here.
Back to School Unit Two: Flash Fiction (1- 15 classes)
A Little About the Why
I love to start the school year with a Flash Fiction Unit for especially for my AP Literature students. It allows you to do a diagnostic of student reading and analysis skills very quickly and forces kids to rely on their own skills rather than Mr. Google.
Flash Fiction stories are short short stories that you can read in under 10 minutes which makes them ideal for the beginning of the year because you can do a story plus a skill and/or term in one class period. For more about Flash Fiction, check out this post.
Texts
One to Ten stories. Choose stories that you like and you think will connect with your kids (click here for a list of my 20 favorite flash fiction short stories for high school students)
Skills and/or Terms
Close Reading (and other literary analysis tasks): I love Flash Fiction as an introduction to close reading. It’s easy to have students read the whole story more than once. It’s fun to do group or partnered annotations. You could use the same Two Part Annotations suggested in the Name Unit.
Writing
Since you can do a story in a single period, you can also really target your writing instruction to focus on pulling evidence, topic sentences, thesis writing, embedding quotes or paragraph development. Just like you can focus on one close reading skill, you can also focus on one writing skill per story OR you can do the same one over the whole unit to really hone it in.
Why it’s great
The great thing about Flash Fiction is that most of the stories take 5-10 minutes to read which means that students can read and reread the whole piece multiple times in one period. You can also do additional diagnostics on student’s abilities.
Back to School Unit Three: 6 Word Stories (1-3 classes)
A Little About the Why
My Flash Fiction Boot Camp Unit for AP Literature opens with a look at the word choice in the “original” 6-word story which is attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” With only those six words to focus on, you can totally do a deep dive into word choice.
But it works just as well if you want to head into a longer personal writing assignment which is why I use it as the first assignment in my Life Lessons from TED writing unit. In that unit, we look at that “original” story but then headed to the site Six-Word Memoirs to find favorites before having students write their own 6-word-story.
When students write their own six-word-students, they must carefully think about the words and the message they want to share with those words. You can expand the project to incorporate a reflective writing assignment to have them identify the word (or words) they think are the most important and/or how changing one word could change the meaning. You could even do a six-word-memoir slam, a brackets style competition to see who has “the best” story.
Texts
1-50 texts: Use the original + Six-Word Memoirs site.
Skills and/or Terms
Diction: This is a great opportunity to teach students that diction is not just word choice but the impact of that choice. You can also teach them about connotation and denotation through this very quick unit.
Writing
Students write their own 6-word story. Optional, have them discuss their diction choices.
Why it’s great
It’s so short that students won’t even realize that you are building skills.
Back to School Unit Four: 26 Word Stories (2-5 classes)
A Little About the Why
I learned about this one from a workshop lead by Kelly Gallagher that I was lucky enough to attend the summer of 2019 (oh how life was different back then). Gallagher shared the story of Dan Jansen, Olympic Speed Skater who fell during the 1988 Olympics after learning of his sister’s death from leukemia and then came back to earn a gold in 1994 Olympics. This story is told in just 26 words in a Visa commercial. The story is engaging and it’s easy to talk about the power of sentence lengths and their impact when you only have to focus on 26 words.
Text
Dan Jansen Youtube Video. It’s only a 30-second spot so I literally show it three or four or even five times over the course of a class period. Create a slide with the text to go with it.
Skills and/or Terms
Pacing & Syntax: Create a slide with the text of the commercial. Have students note that there are some very short sentences and some longer ones. Have them consider what this does to help control the pacing or the rate at which the reader reads the passages.
Writing
Students write their own 26-word stories. Have them consider their sentence lengths as they write.
Why it’s great
Students love the story of Dan Jansen. And again, 26-words is a length that will not intimidate even the most reluctant of writers. They can write about anything while putting focus on how sentence length can impact the meaning. I use this one right after the 6-word stories, so it makes for good building blocks.
Back to School Unit Five: One Word (1 class-full year project)
A Little About the Why
Everyone loves a New Year’s Resolution, but it is well documented that most people don’t follow through. In recent years, there has been a trend to choose a word to be the focus of your year instead of a resolution. You can really do this at anytime during the school year, but the beginning of the school year or the New Year (ie. January) are perfect times to have students choose a word and consider both it denotations and connotations. I introduced this project during the COVID Shutdown of the Spring of 2020 and it was so amazing that I used it as a year-long project the following year.
Text
There are not suggested texts, but you can make a model for your students.
Skills and/or Terms
Connotation, Denotation, Dictionary and Thesaurus Skills: As part of choosing their words, have students consider the multiple definitions of the words along with implications and synonyms and antonyms.
Writing
Have students make their word visible on a 5 x7 index card or even a full sized sheet of paper. Then have them look up the dictionary definition but also consider the implications of it through connotation. You could add other aspects like synonyms and antonyms or even finding a quote or a poem. You can find additional ideas about how to incorporate writing prompts into your One Word Project here.
Why it’s Great
This is another unit for the start of the school year that you can do as much or as little as you want. You can have one day where students choose their word and make it pretty or you can carry it throughout the year. Last year, I gave my AP Lit students a new prompt on the first of the month and it was due (on Google Classroom) on the last of the month. I used Google Classroom, so that meant that it didn’t matter what day of the week the first and the last were, they could be scheduled to post and show the due date.
The reflective nature of this project is also great. Students choose a word to reflect on throughout the year. Prompts related to the word are a super way to see students for who they are. For more on ideas for how to implement The One Word Project, check out this post.
Back to School Units for High School English
Back to school is an exciting time for everyone, teachers and students included. So these 5 back to school units for high school English are a great way to build stamina, get to know a little about your students and show them that you care about who they are.
Looking for other ideas for back to school, check out my friend Missy’s post: How to Do the First Day of School Well at A Better Way to Teach. She gives great advice on how to handle the first day and how much time to spend on those necessary items.
And let me know if you try one of my back to school units for high school English. I would love to know how they work out for you.
Related Resources
10 Poems with Imagery for Back to School
5 Amazing Reasons to Teach Short Story Analysis at the Start of the Year
High School English Teachers: I Planned Your First Week Back To School (A Better Way to Teach)
7 Amazing Activities for the First Day of Class in High School (The Teacher Rewrite)
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Hello My Name Is Mini Writing Unit
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