Everyone is familiar with the beginning of Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be..." While reading Hamlet, help your middle schoolers analyze the lines that follow, but how do you help them make personal connections to the text? Use...

Delve into the world of gerunds and infinitives with this detailed powerpoint. Each slide provides examples and corresponding images. Stopping throughout the presentation would allow for guided and individual practice. This could also be...

High schoolers deconstruct advertising messages by analyzing parody ads and exploring the purpose of satire. Then they create their own parodies based on real ads discussed in class. A creative activity to extend any study of media,...

The PBS film, Bronx Princess, launches a study of complex parent-child relationships. Using the provided reading guide, viewers respond to clips from the film and compare Rocky and Yaa’s relationship to other parent-child relationships....

How can we create “a more respectful, inclusive school community?" What can an individual do to make a member of an excluded or disrespected group feel more respected and included? What can the community do? Class groups record their...

Created for a 10th grade English classroom studying George Orwell's Animal Farm, this mini-project promotes exploration of character and plot. In the first section, young readers are required to characterize one character from the story,...

 Describing things using adjectives is the focus of this lesson plan designed for language learners. Class members play games, draw pictures, and sing songs, adding adjectives to describe animals.

What time do you eat breakfast? Or go to school? Language learners practice crafting and answering questions about their daily routines.

What are you doing? Why, studying the present continuous tense, of course. Language learners engage in activities and exercises that provide them with practice crafting and answering questions using the present continuous tense.

Language learners engage in a series of games and activities designed to help them recognize and name the numbers from ten to twenty.

"Float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee" with a resource about the greatest boxer of our generation. A short biographical reading passage introduces young readers to Muhammad Ali, and includes information about his early life...

Discern the tone in four selected poems with a straightforward assignment. Junior high readers analyze the authors' word choice and text structure to define a tone for each poem, as well as each poem's meaning.

A short story is only as strong as its characters, development, and conflicts. Encourage the young authors in your class to plan their stories based on the elements of narrative writing, all provided in brainstorming graphic organizers.

May the comprehension skills be with you! Focus on context clues, vocabulary words, and analysis questions with an article about Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its record-breaking ticket sales.  

Some days, the world seems like it is becoming darker, but research suggests that the world might actually be becoming a more peaceful place. An informational reading passage accompanied by a series of activities builds English language...

Every neighborhood has its own unique cast of characters, and the crew in the novel Hello Universe is no exception. The characters in Erin Entrada Kelly's novel take center stage in a study guide based on the text....

Many English teachers dream of a classroom full of readers silently enjoying their books. A useful guide helps make that dream become a reality by providing book recommendations for a range of readers. Each suggestion includes the...

Conjunctive adverbs can connect two independent clauses like grammar magic! A short review activity prompts students to find and circle the conjunctive adverbs in each sentence.

Inspire critical thinking with this activity, which prompts learners to compare lesbian, gat, bisexual, and transgender rights with the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By collecting topical articles about...

Students create an illustration based upon a read-aloud. In this visual arts lesson, students listen to the book The Tarantula Scientist and listen for details. Students create a picture based upon what they imagined during the read-aloud.

Study and research the American Civil War in this explanatory writing activity. Middle schoolers complete six activities to learn about the American Civil War and soldiers' views of the war. The activity includes several options to...

Explore informative and explanatory writing with this lesson. Using a cube labeled with directives to describe, analyze, compare, associate, apply, and argue the topic, middle schoolers work individually or in groups to answer questions....

Young scholars write dialogue. For this character development lesson students use direct or indirect speech to include a confrontation between two characters in their story. Young scholars portray the emotions of the characters in...

Whether you are planning a unit on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, or simply want to improve your pupils' descriptive writing, this lesson could be a good addition to your class. Using the Six-Trait Writing process, pupils...