Class groups examine a series of poems that use Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a motif in Holocaust poetry. Included are questions, notes to the teacher, and bibliographical information on each poem. The activities could be...

Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...

A good poem has form and structure built into it. Middle schoolers see that the structure of a poem consists of stanza, form, rhyme, and meter. The structure also contributes to a poem's meaning. After listening to, and discussing, a few...

FANBOYS will enjoy breaking grammar rules, but they will have to use coordinating conjunctions, gerunds, compound sentences, compound-complex sentences, and even predicates as they craft poems like Shel Silverstein.

Pass the tea! Using the resource, scholars participate in a Tea Party protocol to analyze text and images about inventions that helped meet societal demands. After sharing their observations with each other, they discuss visual elements...

Connect the ideas of jazz improvisation and art to writing poetry. Learners collaborate and write different lines of poetry, imitating the jazz styles of improvisation and freewriting. Take a close look at the poems "Tenebrae" by Yusef...

Exposing learners to the power of words in poetry is a stimulating way to learn languages. Songs, haikus, rhyming words, and narrative works are all employed in a resource for teaching English as a Second Language.

Tone and Mood are not synonymous! Introduce young readers to these literary devices with a series of exercises that not only point out the significant differences between the terms but also shows them how to identify both the tone and...

To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine...

Sometimes saying I'm sorry just doesn't cut it. Scholars examine a series of apology poems, songs, and stories and consider each speaker's regrets. Using what they have learned, they analyze James Hurst's short story, "The Scarlet Ibis,"...

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...

High schoolers identify the distinction between literal and figurative language with a focus on metaphors. They complete a metaphor analysis chart, then practice expanding metaphors by composing their own comparisons of elements of the...

Now that your class has read all of Esperanza Rising, take the time to tackle big metaphors and themes. Pupils will participate in an activity called Chalk Talk, in which they circulate around the room in small groups and add...

Whether you are planning on using Of Mice and Men for whole-class reading or as a selection for literature circles; whether you are new to John Steinbeck's novel, or it has long been a part of your curriculum, you...

Paul Chan's latest exhibit includes seven manifestations of light. Today, kids analyze the pieces 1st Light  and 5th Light. They consider the concept of opposed or dualistic realities found in literature, society, and Chan's work....

Young scholars read a poem and use the TPCASTT strategy for analysis. In this poetry analysis lesson, students journal about their future goals and read John Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player." Young scholars discuss the purpose of the poem...

Young scholars analyze the characters and events in fictional writing. For this literary elements lesson, students study the meaning of the words characterization and fiction. They listen to the story Pigsty by Mark Teague, or any other...

Terror, mystery, excitement. American writers of the 19th century, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, used these elements to create morally ambiguous tales that challenged the prevailing belief in...

Sixth graders use several pieces of literature to identify specific story elements. In this story elements lesson, 6th graders analyze the story element of character, character traits, and setting for the example stories. Students work...

What is poetry? Does hip-hop qualify as poetry? Do Shakespeare's monologues qualify as poetry? Class members grapple with these questions as they examine the poetic elements and themes presented in different texts. Groups of four study...

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...

Wrap up your literary analysis unit with a discussion activity as tenth graders prepare for an end-of-unit assessment. After they have read and annotated Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His Love," Sir Walter Raleigh's...

Did you know that modern Chinese literature “grew from the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud”? Designed for a world literature class, seniors are introduced to “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” Shi Zhecun’s stream of...

A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....