Lesson Plans and Assessments from YES Prep

At YES Prep North Central in Houston, Texas, teachers work together weekly as creators of curriculum. The charter school, serving grades 6-12, exists to help children from low-income homes complete college and thus rewrite their families' futures. So the lessons and assessments that teachers invent are designed to be rigorous and challenging, and to give students much of the responsibility for their own learning. They also make a practice of sharing their rubrics with students so that the learners clearly understand the quality of work they must produce.

Here, YES Prep educators share some of their favorite lesson plans and assessments with you, in hopes that you and your students may use and enjoy them.

Assignment: Romeo and Juliet literary analysis, grade-nine English 930K

Rubric: Literary analysis 160K

Rubric: Oral presentation 65K

Lesson plan: Appeals of argument, grade-eight English 251K

Student-choice sheet: Layered curriculum on To Kill a Mockingbird 170K

Rubric: Covering multiple elements of layered English curriculum 138K

Rubric: Grade-ten history presentation on the Crusades 154K

Lesson plan: International trade, grade-ten history 178K

Quiz: International trade, grade-ten history 146K

Assignment and rubric: Inspirational video with music 343K

Assignment and rubric: Digital photography 141K

Assignment and rubric: Building a Web page 199K

Lesson plan: Weekly plan for multimedia class 193K

Unit plan: The Great Gatsby, grade-11 English 439K

Unit plan: Choice and consequences, grade-ten English 555K

Unit plan: Experimental design and the cell, grade-seven science 560K

Unit plan: How trade changed the world, grade-ten history 537K

Unit plan: Systems of linear equations, Algebra 1 505K

Unit plan: Foundations of geometry 270K

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