O. Henry's short story, "The Give of the Magi," launches a study of what motivates people to act as they do. Class members identify what they believe are the motivations of the characters in O. Henry's tale and then craft a one-page...

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs provides the lens class members use to analyze and evaluate the motivations of the characters in Sylvia Plath's "Initiation" and scenes from Mean Girls. Readers then select a character from A...

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...

Eighth graders read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and participate in whole class discussions. They evaluate, analyze, and synthesize information in the text in order to explain character motivation and action. Students produce an essay...

When will we ever use this? A Pixar movie maker explains to students how math is used in the creation of animated films. The movie maker discusses the importance of coordinate planes, transformations and translations, and...

How does our moral reasoning shape our identity? After a study of Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Reasoning, readers use Kohlberg's theories to analyze the speech, thoughts, and decisions of a character in A Separate Peace. They then...

Third graders practice the skills of identifying the main message in a story, describing the main character, and sorting the key details of a story into specific categories. The story they read is, The Boy Who Loved Words. Using a...

Sophia's War, Avi's novel that tracks the adventures of Sophia Calderwood, a fictional character, as well as the true stories of British Major John Andre and General Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution, is the anchor...

What are the effects of competition in an academic environment? The competition between the main characters in A Separate Peace motivates a series of activities that asks readers to take a stance on competition, and then to develop a...

High schoolers read texts, view film and video and conduct research in an analysis and comparison of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and the Kabuki piece "Chushingura". They focus their analysis on the theme of revenge.

Students complete play and vocabulary analysis for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this Macbeth analysis lesson, students use an online research engine to locate passages that highlight Macbeth's response to fear and his descent into...

Students watch the video Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. They participate in daily lecture, and create vocabulary cards. Students participate in oral reading evaluation, and complete a writing assignment:Do things like those that...

The works of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet and Britain's 2009 poet laureate, serve as a model for a writing activity that asks class members to select a character card, brainstorm lists of words, phrases, actions, and items associated...

Villains populate literature. These dastardly characters serve as a contrast to the hero who they set out to destroy. Iago, the villain of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, certainly rates as one of the most despicable. Motivated by...

Third graders read excepts from the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker in order to gain practice in understanding an unfamiliar story by focusing on the details. They use a worksheet, embedded in the plan, which directs them to certain...

For this ninth lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit, close reading skills are used independently to find the gist of the story That Book Woman. Rereading for important details is the targeted skill to unlock a deeper...

Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...

Young scholars examine the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Cask of Amontillado." In this character lesson, students discuss and analyze the characters in the story. Young scholars make personal connections to the characters and create a...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Class members may "think themselves accurs'd" when they first hear of an assignment that asks them to create a motivational speech. After studying the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V; however, they will count...

Third graders continue to practice the close reading skills of capturing the gist and reading again for important details in the sixth instructional activity in a larger unit. This is a great beginning-of-the-year unit for establishing...

Here is a lesson designed for middle schoolers which helps them recognize stereotypes one way or another against a particular group of people. They also determine what may have motivated the author to use a stereotype in the first place....

Young scholars research the social context of Elizabethan England for Shakespeare's "Hamlet". They identify cultural influences on the play focusing on the theme of revenge and then analyze and compare film interpretations of the play.

Eighth graders read selected passages from The Diary of Anne Frank. Working in pairs, 8th graders determine what qualities and characteristics they would assign to her from their selected diary entry.