ELA Grades 9-12 Common Core Activity Pack: Task Cards, Escape Room, Close Reading & Digital Slides

Give your high school English students rigorous, ready-to-run Common Core practice with classic texts, seminal U.S. documents, and real argument writing, all in one pack.

What's inside (59-page PDF + 19 interactive slides):

• Teacher Guide (3 pages): what's inside, standards alignment table by activity, pacing ideas, and LOW PREP setup.
• Task Cards & Station Rotation (17 pages): 32 task cards in 4 stations (Literary Lens, Rhetoric & Argument, Word Work, Sentence Craft & Claims) with varied formats: multiple choice, select-two, sort, match, rank, find the mistake, revise, and constructed response. Includes station signs and recording sheets.
• Escape Room: The Athenaeum Vault (11 pages): an archive mystery with 6 locks (3-digit, letter, directional, color sequence, 4-digit, and final word lock), teacher setup, team code sheet, hint cards, and a reward letter.
• Close Reading & Writing Packet (19 pages): Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865), and an original paired argument on school start times, with annotation guide, vocabulary in context, text-dependent questions, evidence organizer, argument or explanatory writing prompt, planner, and student-friendly rubric.
• Answer Keys (8 pages) for every activity, plus a terms of use page.
• Interactive Slides (19-slide PowerPoint, opens in Google Slides): drag-and-drop sorts, sequence strips, matching cards, and type-in boxes, with an answer key section.

Standards: RL.9-10.1, RL.9-10.2, RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.4, RL.9-10.5, RL.11-12.4, RL.11-12.5, RL.11-12.6, RI.9-10.4, RI.9-10.5, RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.8, RI.9-10.9, RI.11-12.2, RI.11-12.4, RI.11-12.5, RI.11-12.6, RI.11-12.8, RI.11-12.9, W.9-10.1, W.11-12.1, W.9-10.2, W.11-12.2, L.9-10.1a, L.9-10.2a, L.9-10.2b, L.9-10.4a, L.9-10.4b, L.9-10.4c, L.9-10.5a, L.9-10.5b, L.11-12.1b, L.11-12.3a, L.11-12.4a, L.11-12.5a.

LOW PREP: Print and go. Cut the task cards, post the station signs, and copy the recording sheets. Run the escape room with real locks or a simple teacher check. Assign the slides through your learning platform. All literary and historical excerpts are public domain; modern passages are original.

License: Single-classroom license. For school or team licenses, send a message through the store's Contact page.

Designed by a classroom teacher and instructional coach. Illustrations are created with AI tools; all content is written and reviewed for standards alignment and classroom use.