How authors bring characters to life and make them believable is the focus of a lesson on characterization. Readers closely examine passages from To Kill a Mockingbird and Dreamland Burning, noting details that reveal the character's...

After completing Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose, class members assume the voice of Gemma and craft a personal letter to her granddaughter telling Becca how she feels about Becca’s actions and the discoveries at Chelmno. Complete directions for...

Explore the impact a narrator's point of view has on a story with a reading of the children's book, Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Written in four different voices, the story is told and retold from different perspectives to...

Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

Explore gender stereotypes by analyzing how male and female characters are depicted in comic books. Using the provided Comic Book Analysis sheet, students record the attributes of male and female comic book characters. Then the whole...

Whether or not your school/state has adopted the Common Core standards, you will want to add this resource to your Of Mice and Men curriculum materials. The chapter-by-chapter activities ask readers to provide evidence from the novella...

Invite your pupils to express their understanding of a novel through a collaborative video project. Groups choose a novel from those you have studied in class, select four scenes, storyboard the scenes, film the scenes, edit the film,...

Explore multiple perspectives through a jigsaw activity that will improve your pupils' understanding of the characters in Esperanza Rising as well as their understanding of strikes and human rights. Tapping into prior knowledge, and...

Each one of the learners in your class has a story to tell, so help them learn the most efficient and organized way to tell their tale. A thorough unit on narrative writing addresses the writing process, grammar, story structure,...

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is the anchor text for a activity that teaches readers how to distinguish between a literary topic and a literary theme. Using the provided worksheets, groups first chart some themes and propose a...

Pictures really do talk in a lesson that teaches young writers how to craft dialogues. Class members closely examine Grant Wood's American Gothic, imagine what the couple might think or feel, and put these words to paper, crafting a...

Somebody. Wanted. But. Then. Introduce your classes to the structure that supports stories with a lesson that teaches readers how to identify the four basic components writers use to craft their tales. After identifying these elements in...

A set of 14 primary sources provides background for a study of Lorraine Hansberry's drama, A Raisin in the Sun. Featured are images from stage productions of the play, white supremacy protests, a clip from a television interview, and...

Can utopia be achieved? Included here are three literature worksheets to pair with Lois Lowry's The Giver. Pupils work in groups to come up with solutions to society's issues, individuals back up a statement related to a topic in the...

Start a activity on poetic voice with a peer to peer discussion on what characterizes the strength in the voice with which a writer chooses to express himself/herself. In pairs, readers are tasked with reading and creating T-charts for...

What do readers discover about a character within the first few sections of a text? Pupils begin reading Shakespeare's Macbeth and analyze the language in the first few scenes of the play. They also demonstrate understanding with a Quick...

The guide to John Steinbeck's The Pearl suggests ways instructors can help readers see below the surface of the novella to the parable beneath. Through a variety of activities, readers come to appreciate the complexity of the tale.

Shirley Jackson's short story, "Charles," provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to practice their close reading skills. Using the provided list of prompts, scholars read and reread the story, then create a multimodal response to...

Lead your readers into the fourth dimension as time travelers with a Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) Teacher Guide of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. The 144-page guide includes a unit calendar, introduction, nine lessons, teacher...

Focus on complex characters with a lesson from a series that teaches individual skills from the Common Core. Specifically, this resource provides practice with standard RL.9-10.3. Get pupils thinking and talking about characters with the...

Readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four engage in a close reading exercise that directs their focus to the key details Orwell provides in the opening paragraphs to introduce his dystopian society. The included worksheeet is divided into three...

"What is the theme of this story?" The very question can spark fear in the minds of readers and incinerate confidence. Here you will discover an exercise that shows how writers use the tools of setting, plot, conflict, and...

What are the job requirements for the office of president of the United States? What attributes should a candidate possess? Are the qualities needed to govern the same as those needed to win? What can an analysis of the...

How was Edgar Allan Poe able to create "intriguing, memorable, and lasting literature"? To answer this question, learners analyze the syntax, diction, and characterizations in Poe's poems and short stories and compare the impact of these...