List of MicroSims

Interactive Micro Simulations to help students explore English Language Arts concepts hands-on. Each sim is embedded directly in the chapter where it is introduced.

• American Foundational Documents Timeline

  

  Explore the chronological relationships among key foundational documents and writings that shaped American intellectual and civic life, from 1776 to 1964.

• American Literary Periods Timeline

  

  Identify and contextualize the major American literary periods by locating representative works on an interactive timeline spanning the colonial era to postmodernism.

• Argument Anatomy Explorer

  

  Apply the Toulmin model to identify and label the components of a real argument — claim, evidence, warrant, backing, qualifier, counterclaim, and rebuttal — in three classic texts.

• Causal Loop Diagram Explorer

  

  Apply systems thinking by constructing and interpreting causal loop diagrams for real-world phenomena, identifying reinforcing and balancing feedback loops.

• Cognitive Bias Spotter

  

  Identify cognitive biases in realistic scenarios and develop strategies for recognizing them in everyday arguments and media.

• Essay Architecture Explorer

  

  Apply the structural conventions of argumentative essays by identifying and labeling the functional role of each paragraph — introduction, body, counterclaim, and conclusion.

• Figurative Language Explorer

  

  Identify and distinguish nine major figures of speech — metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony, symbolism, and allusion — with definitions, examples, and practice questions.

• Five ELA Strands — Interactive Overview

  

  Recall the five ELA strands and explore how reading, writing, speaking & listening, language, and research form an interconnected system.

• Freytag's Pyramid — Plot Structure Explorer

  

  Identify and apply the five stages of Freytag's Pyramid by locating the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution in classic literary works.

• Lexile Level Explorer

  

  Apply understanding of Lexile levels to identify appropriately challenging texts for a given reader profile and explore representative works across the full Lexile spectrum.

• Literary Genre Landscape

  

  Classify the four major literary categories — fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry — and their subgenres by exploring an interactive network diagram.

• Logical Fallacy Navigator

  

  Identify seven common logical fallacies in realistic argument scenarios and practice distinguishing valid reasoning from flawed rhetoric.

• Narrative Time — Scene, Summary, and Flashback

  

  Distinguish between scene, summary, and flashback as narrative techniques by mapping how authors manipulate story time versus narrative space in classic works.

• Poetry Forms Comparison

  

  Compare and contrast epic poetry, sonnets, lyric poetry, and free verse by examining their defining traits, representative examples, and structural conventions.

• Research Writing Process

  

  Apply the research methodology framework by mapping a research project's phases — background research, focused inquiry, source evaluation, and synthesis — across primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.

• Sentence Structure Analyzer

  

  Identify and label clause structure in simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences — and participial phrases — by clicking on color-coded grammatical chunks.

• Source Credibility Spectrum

  

  Evaluate multiple news and media sources by mapping them on a two-axis chart of ideological perspective versus credibility indicators, with category filters and evaluation questions.

• Vocabulary Morphology Explorer

  

  Apply morphological analysis by identifying word roots, prefixes, and suffixes to infer the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary using three Latin roots: spec/spect, port, and dict/dic.