Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record...

Mystery is an exciting genre for young readers to investigate. The plots are so intriguing! Here is a series of lessons featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that invite learners to enter the world of the mystery genre.  Based on what...

Looking to improve your classes literacy program? Then look no further. This comprehensive collection of resources includes worksheets and activities covering everything from r-controlled vowels and consonant digraphs, to the...

Gear up for Halloween by studying the horror genre with your class and analyzing films and texts to uncover the genre's traditional conventions.

Jazz, Blue Grass, Hip Hop, Swing. Gospel, R&B, Ragtime, Disco. So many music genres born in the USA. After reading an article about the fate of New Orlean's Jazz after Hurricane Katrina, class members investigate the life cycles of...

As the culminating project for a unit study of The House of the Scorpion, class members craft a multi-genre research paper to demonstrate not only their depth of knowledge of a topic of interest to them, but also their...

Imagine a cross-curricular project that not only rewards learners for examining the textbooks used in their other classes but builds literacy skills as well! Groups compare the formats and writing style in their various textbooks. Teams...

Can authors speak to each other across works, genres, and centuries? Study the conversation between Christopher Marlowe in his poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and the responses by Sir Walter Raleigh and William Carlos Williams...

It is no easy feat to wade through legal and political documents. And incorporating this type of informational text into a literature class can also be a challenge. Here’s a resource that includes suggestions for how to address this...

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...

Tired of those blank stares after your class reads a particularly complex passage from a Shakespearean play? Help high schoolers untangle that prose with a literature circle activity. Ten different roles prompt class members to focus on...

Prepare your class for a unit on Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles with an activity that works for pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading. Learners fill out a K-W-H-L chart to reflect on what they already know, what...

The second module in a series for high school seniors focuses on tracking the central idea of a text across genres and from multiple author and character perspectives. Twelfth graders read a speech by Benazir Bhutto entitled "Ideas Live...

Here is a must-have resource for studying fairy tales, myths, and folktales with your class! It includes instructional ideas, activities, and materials to support a month-long review of these three unique genres of writing.

Expand your pupils' understanding of the short story genre with a study of John Updike and his story "A&P." This activity, the fourth in a series of fourteen, invites learners to examine literary terms and read and discuss the story....

A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to...

There is a reason why an Oscar is given each year for the Best Adaptation Screenplay. Adaptations are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare a work of literature with a least one adaptation of the work into a...

King Lear, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz and Anse Bundren? Imagine a unit that examines the tragic hero and patriarchy in King Lear, As I Lay Dying and Apocalypse Now. To liven the brew, learners are asked to include in...

Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...

Examine the book Stargazers by Gail Gibbons. Young readers will practice reading and interpreting information from diagrams in this informational text. They work together as a class on this skill and then move into independent...

Thor, Loki, Iron Man, and Captain America. As part of their study of Greek and Roman gods and heroes, middle schoolers compare the characters in The Avengers to Greek counterparts. Individuals then create their own superhero,...

Let's have a look at something different. Scholars take a look at the text Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom Super Scientist and discuss how the structure, graphics, and images appear different than previous works...

If you are teaching Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, you can't afford to miss this source. An extensive list of ideas outlines numerous discussion topics, writing prompts, comprehension questions, oral presentations, and projects. Have class...

What does is take to be a role model? Through grand conversation, and the use of books and a graphic organizer, scholars find out and apply the requirements to identify a role model within their family. They then journey through the...