Would a bluebird be as scary as a vulture? Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" is the central text in a lesson plan about symbolism. After a close reading of the poem, learners consider what the raven might represent to the narrator. They then...

Pair the famous poems "I Hear America Singing," by Walt Whitman, and "I, Too, Sing America," by Langston Hughes, with a more recent poem by Elizabeth Alexander called "Praise Song for the Day" to demonstrate a theme and introduce your...

Budding poets create two acrostic poems, one for their name and another using a word of their choice. Over the course of five days, scholars compose, revise, publish, and share their work with their peers.

Walt Whitman's poem "A Noiseless Patient Spider" provides high schoolers an opportunity to reflect on the importance of perseverance and fortitude. After drafting a Quick Write about a time they tried and tried again to accomplish...

Learners gain insight into how songs and poems express feelings of injustice. They also learn about literary devices and types of poems and make a personal connection when they write their own free verse poems about injustice.

First-year High school scholars explore the world of poetry with an 11-lesson unit that examines a range of poetry forms and tries their hand at crafting their own poems. Young poets then collect their work in a portfolio that they...

Walt Whitman's poem "As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days" offers scholars an opportunity to practice their noticing skills. They first examine a postcard of the Newport News Shipyard listing things they notice about the image and how...

What a fun idea! The class discusses, and then writes free-verse poems using sensory detail. They get into small collaborative writing teams to compose their poems. Next, they pantomime the actions from the poem while their teammates...

Explore soil, genetic traits, natural resources, and pollution in a series of lessons that focus on biodiversity. Kids complete experiments to learn more about the importance of varied genes and organisms in an ecosystem.

The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...

Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death" provides high schoolers with an opportunity to practice their critical thinking skills. They examine the images, diction, rhythm, and rhyme scheme the poet uses and consider how...

The unit study of Angel Island Immigration Station concludes with scholars using information from the previous lessons to craft a news story about the Angel Island program.

Bob Dylan's selection as the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first songwriter ever to receive the honor, has focused the attention of a new generation on the work of the legendary artist. Class members...

This, the sixth in a series of 10 related resources, examines the life and works of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an African American author, born in 1825, who advocated literacy for both free and enslaved African Americans.