Student Texts
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Our searchable library of short texts offers a diverse mix of stories and perspectives. This multigenre, multimedia collection aligns with the Common Core's recommendations for text complexity and the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards.

Choose from informational and literary nonfiction texts, literature, photographs, political cartoons, interviews, infographics and more. You can also filter by text type, grade level, subject and topic.

“The leveled texts have really helped me engage students and introduce them to complex topics in a way they can understand.”

Text Type
Grade Level
Social Justice Domain
Subject
Topic

621 Texts

Literature

A War on the Peaceful

This story, illustrated by Don Kilpatrick, describes a group of people who immigrated from Germany to the United States in order to seek religious asylum and practice their way of life in peace, but were met by continued persecution, which only escalated when World War I broke out.
by
Story Corner
Grade Level
3-5
Topic
Subject
History
Geography
Social Justice Domain
January 5, 2015
Literature

Raised By Women

In her poem, Kelly Norman Ellis brings to life a vivid picture of the kind of women she was surrounded and brought up by during her childhood in Mississippi. The poem's speaker takes you down south and makes you feel like a guest at the kitchen table by way of her descriptions.
by
Kelly Norman Ellis
Grade Level
6-8
Social Justice Domain
January 5, 2015
Informational

The Communist Manifesto

This excerpt from the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto establishes the dichotomy between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which is merely a new relationship of oppressor vs. oppressed in the history of class struggles, as Marx and Engels argue that all societies have had these kinds of contending classes.
by
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Grade Level
Topic
Subject
History
Economics
Social Justice Domain
January 5, 2015
Literature

The First Coconut Tree

In this pourquoi tale, a mother living on one of the islands in the Pacific Islands, is mystified when she bears a round child with no arms and no legs, but she tenderly raises the child until one day he asks to be buried in the sand, where he can grow (into the first coconut tree) and every part of him can be useful.
by
Nancy Bo Flood
Grade Level
3-5
Subject
Geography
Social Justice Domain
January 5, 2015
Literature

An Angry Black Woman on the Subject of the Angry White Man

Jordan's poem takes on an sarcastic tone as she describes the duties, punishments, emotions and false promises endured by African Americans since slavery in response to Bill Clinton's description of affirmative action as "a psychologically difficult time for the so-called angry White man."
by
June Jordan
Grade Level
Subject
History
Economics
Social Justice Domain
July 7, 2014
Literature

Margaret Batchelder, Immigrant Inspector (1903)

Margaret Batchelder writes to President Theodore Roosevelt to tell him how women inspectors welcome immigrants—with smiles and encouragement. Although not allowed to question the immigrants, the women make a difference in the immigrants' first experiences on shore.
by
Gwenyth Swain
Grade Level
Subject
History
Social Justice Domain
July 7, 2014
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