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Lesson Plan
2
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What So Proudly We Hail

The Meaning of America: National Identity and Why It Matters

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Combining a close reading of a classic American text with the study of history can be a very powerful strategy, and this is most certainly the case with this resource using Edward Everett Hale's The Man without a Country. Consider themes...
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Lesson Plan
BW Walch

“Outsider” Poet Kay Ryan Goes from Poetry Club Reject to Poet Laureate

For Teachers 6th - 11th Standards
The cat might have got your tongue, but you can’t avoid the elephant in the room while you wait for the other shoe to drop. After all, the early bird gets the worm and the chickens are circling. After researching Poet Laureate Kay Ryan...
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Lesson Plan
What So Proudly We Hail

The Meaning of America: Freedom and Religion

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
The United States of America was founded on firm ideals of both the pursuit of happiness and a spirit of reverence. Through a close reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The May-Pole of Merry Mount," you can examine what some consider was a...
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Lesson Plan
2
2
Pulitzer Center

"Voices from Haiti": Using Poetry to Speak up for a Cause

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Explore a real world use of poetry with your class! Young language arts pupils consider the concept of advocacy and how journalism, photography, and poetry can raise awareness for a cause. They read several poems about individuals...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

For Teachers 11th - Higher Ed Standards
How do artists affect and how are artists affected by the time periods in which they live? Learners examine the life and work of controversial and influential cultural artist Patti Smith as they seek answers to this essential question....
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Exploring Contrasts in "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Middle schoolers analyze the speaker's ideas and tone in the Billy Collins poem "The Lanyard." After identifying how each of the five senses is addressed in the poem, they compare images to draw conclusions about the speaker and his...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Red Badge of Courage: A New Kind of Realism

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Is it possible to tell a true war story? Tim O’Brien says that fiction is for “getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” To get at the truth about war, class members examine primary source materials from the...
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Lesson Plan
Penguin Books

Gulliver's Travels Teacher's Notes

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Who are "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”? Readers of Gulliver’s Travels will learn the answer, as the journey with Lemuel Gulliver to Lilliput,...
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Activity
Shmoop

ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5

For Teachers 11th - 12th Standards
What would happen if I structured this review by beginning in the middle of it? Or by flashing back to the dinner I had last night that gave me bad heartburn, and then transitioned into how the lingering burn of acid seeped into my...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Jamie Ford’s historical novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, explores the relationship between a young Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl set against the backdrop of Seattle during World War II. The teaching...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Speech in the Virginia Convention

For Teachers 11th - 12th Standards
“. . .different men often see the same subject in different lights. . .” but the great orator Patrick Henry used all the skills at his command to craft a speech to convince listeners to see things as he did--that liberty was worth dying...
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Lesson Plan
Brethren High School

Romanticism Through the Eyes of Art, Poetry, and Technology

For Teachers 12th Standards
Use this simple collaborative activity to introduce the definition, art, and poetry of romanticism. Educators will have to provide the poetry, images of the art, and the survey for the learners, but by using this resource, they won't...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Introduction To Literary Analysis

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Explore the fascinating ways in which authors use specific literary devices to create interesting and realistic texts. Using non-fiction articles with the subject of rogue waves, an excerpt from The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger,...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Shakespeare's Macbeth: Fear and Motives of Evil

For Teachers 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Students complete play and vocabulary analysis for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this Macbeth analysis lesson, students use an online research engine to locate passages that highlight Macbeth's response to fear and his descent into...
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Lesson Plan
Yale University

Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: An Example of Greek New Comedy

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
This site is actually an in-depth lesson plan for the teaching of the Greek New Comedy, "The Grouch," by Menander. For students, it provides a great deal of detail about the play and background material on Greek comedy as a whole....
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Article
Other

Mostly Fiction: Latin American Writers and Magic

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
The writer of this site tells about her experience with reading literature written in the "magical realism" style. It is a personal response to literature, rather than a scholarly analysis, but it is well-written and knowledgable. Many...
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Handout
University of Toronto (Canada)

University of Toronto Libraries: Glossary of Literary Theory

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
A glossary of definitions for terms related to literary theory. Click each word in the glossary list and a definition with examples appears.
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Unit Plan
Annenberg Foundation

Annenberg Learner: Literary Visions

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Twenty-six half hour videos on literary analysis for high school students that feature authors, scholars, actors and noted critics. Topics include The Art of the Essay, Setting and Character in Short Fiction, Responding to Literature and...
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PPT
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Forms

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This slideshow lesson focuses on forms of fiction: short story, novella, and novel. It describes the defining characteristics of each, provides examples, and explains how to identify each.
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PPT
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Purpose

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This slideshow lesson focuses on purpose; it defines purpose and lists the two main purposes of all writing: to educate (didactic text meaning to inform and instruct) or to entertain (imaginative text). The purpose could also be art for...
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Website
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Selecting Topics for Literary Analysis

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
A series of resources designed to teach students how to write a literary analysis. The first is a screencast [6 mins] that focuses on defining and introducing the parts of a literary analysis. The second is a slide show with seven slides...
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Online Course
Yale University

Yale University: Open Yale Courses: Introduction to Theory of Literature

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Access any one of twenty-five lectures, in audio, video, or text format, from a university-level course in literary analysis and critical literary theories. Considers postmodernism, New Criticism, feminism, deconstructionism, and an...
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Unit Plan
Annenberg Foundation

Annenberg Learner: Invitation to World Literature

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Multimedia course focuses on thirteen literary classics from many different times and many different cultures. Each lesson centers on a half-hour video offering multiple perspectives on a particular work. Read excerpts from each work and...
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Unit Plan
Georgia Department of Education

Ga Virtual Learning: "How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay" [Pdf]

For Students 10th - 12th Standards
This is a nine-page PDF entitled "How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay" which explains in detail the parts of a literary analysis and how to write them.