Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

“Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” These two views of war, embodied in George Patton’s statement and Lorraine Schneider‘s famous 1966...

Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms...

Writing poetry in ancient China was the modern equivalent of sending a greeting card. Scholars learn about the ancient Chinese poetic form called the lu shih. They read about the context of poetry during the T'ang Dynasty and complete a...

Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...

How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...

Parental relationships have a huge impact on our personalities, for better or for worse. Read about Mike's relationship with his father in H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights and how it informed the novel's central idea.

As writers continue to revise their argument essays, the focus shifts to editing grammatical conventions, parallel structure, and varying syntax to add interest. After examining model sentences that demonstrate sentence variety, writers...

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.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Contrary to popular belief, the monster's name in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not Frankenstein. A teacher's guide for the novel helps readers make sense of key details in the text, define vocabulary words, and discuss prominent...

Readers of Paradise Lost draw parallels between Milton's tale and Gene Zion's Harry the Dirty Dog, an illustrated children's book.

Hold a discussion in writing about coping strategies to prepare your pupils for reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman. After journaling, pupils come up in an organized fashion and write...

Here's an activity that uses a reading comprehension strategy based on Bloom's taxonomy to focus readers' attention on key passages from Edward Bloor's Tangerine. Worthy of a place in your curriculum library.

Cover one-point perspective through observation and practice. Class members examine several works of art that use one-point perspective, look at magazine images to find the vanishing points and horizon lines, and draw their own city...

Add a great resource to your collection of The Grapes of Wrath curriculum materials. A thorough packet contains loads of useful suggestions, whether you use the novel as an anchor text, as a reading circle...

Students 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.

Imagine using a six-sided cube to encourage readers to analyze a topic in greater depth. Create a cube, label each of the six sides with one of Bloom's comprehension levels, and you're ready to launch a discussion of a text....

Here's a must-have packet for your curriculum library. If you are interested in Fahrenheit 451, if you are interested in Ray Bradbury, if you are interested in censorship, if you interested in programs that make a difference, then...

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...

Students examine several possible ways of understanding Leontes' jealousy through close reading, a performance activity, and the use of a primary source document. They, in groups, perform a scene.

As class members continue their study of approaches to literary criticism, readers examine the symbolism and archetypal patterns in John Knowles' A Separate Peace, and how these parallels are used to develop a theme...

By The Great Horn Spoon is a fantastic novel for introducing learners to life during the California Gold Rush. First, kids research and analyze American folk songs, then they connect to the text as they listen to symphonic pieces written...

Before beginning The Winter's Tale groups read and discuss a scenario that parallels the plot of Shakespeare's play. They then brainstorm possible solutions to the problem.