Dream of a Nation Common Core Unit Plans

Dream of a Nation.org is a public awareness and education initiative aiming to inform and empower citizens and students with critical knowledge and solutions for strengthening our society. They offer a 400-page book (for free in .pdf!) for english, history, science, and even math teachers to use in their classrooms.

Moreover, Dream of a Nation has developed several unit plans aligned with the English Language Arts Common Core Standards. These units are designed to give students in-depth exposure to, and practice with, the critical writing, reading, listening, speaking and thinking which the Common Core demands. These units use Dream of a Nation essays as their starting point and then ask students to create their own research projects, analytic essays, debate speeches, narrative essays and interdisciplinary essays. These units are designed for grades eight through twelve but because each unit plan addresses a different Common Core focus they can also all be adapted for any grade level, 8-12. Because Common Core is vertically aligned schools can adopt each Unit Plan designed for their grade level and be assured that their curriculum is vertically aligned and students are gaining direct and creative instruction in all standards.

Dream of a Nation is a high Lexile level (1340), non-fiction text which aptly supports the Common Core emphasis on text range, quality and complexity. For more in-depth information on which standards each unit addresses please open the full unit plans below.

The textbook can be accessed here