Literacy Design Collaborative
Analyzing the Development of Theme through Pivotal Moments
Liliana Heker's "The Stolen Party" and Martha Salinas' "The Scholarship Jacket" provide sixth graders with an opportunity to identify key scenes that authors use to develop their themes.
Literacy Design Collaborative
Catching a Grenade: How Word Choice Impacts Meaning and Tone
Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...
Literacy Design Collaborative
Analyzing Language through Dialogue and Internal Monologue in "The Scarlet Ibis"
James Hurst's short story "The Scarlet Ibis" provides eighth graders with an opportunity to sharpen their literary analysis skills. After a close reading of the text, class members highlight and annotate parts of the dialogue and...
Literacy Design Collaborative
Macbeth: Influence of Supernatural
Something wickedly wonderful this way comes in a instructional activity that focuses on Macbeth. After a close reading of the play, class members craft a literary analysis essay in which they use evidence from the text to show how...
Literacy Design Collaborative
Author Study: Kate Chopin
Four stories by Kate Chopin offer high schoolers an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the ways authors use various literary elements and movements to develop their themes and social commentaries.
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 3, Unit 3, Lesson 1
The opening exercise in this instructional unit introduces class members to the writing process they will follow to craft an informative, expository research paper that addresses their research question. To begin, writers are asked to...
University of North Carolina
Reading to Write
Silly journal and essay prompts may be fun to write, but they don't model the kind of writing needed for college papers and standardized tests. The 15th part in a series of 24 covers the concept of reading to write—during and after...
University of North Carolina
Literature Reviews
A literature review goes beyond simply giving a novel a thumbs up or thumbs down. In fact, it may not require an opinion at all. Using a handout on literature reviews, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers...
EngageNY
Rereading and Close Reading: Communism, “The Vietnam Wars,” and “Last Respects” (Pages 85 and 86)
What might a papaya symbolize? Using the resource, scholars look for examples of symbolism in the novel Inside Out & Back Again. They also participate in a silent discussion called a Chalk Talk, writing their responses to a...
Weber County Library
Abstract Ideas Explored: Writing with Extended Metaphor
A 25-page packet includes eight detailed lesson plans centered around poems by Emily Dickinson. Each lesson begins with a burning question that high schoolers attempt to answer by using evidence from Dickinson's poems.
Poetry Society
How do Poets Use Language?
Why do writers choose the language they do? Here's a resource that has the poet himself answer that very question. Joseph Coelho explains why he chose the words and images he used in his poem, "If All the World Were Paper."
Literacy Design Collaborative
Building Ideas and Making Connections: "Monkey See, Monkey Do"
Reading a scientific article about cross-species synchronization may sound like a yawner. But "Monkey See, Monkey Do" is a fascinating tale that just happens to be about yawning, within and across species. After a close reading, class...
Literacy Design Collaborative
The Scarlet Letter and Hester Prynne
Is Hester Prynne a virtuous woman? To conclude a unit study of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter class members craft an argument essay in which they use the standards listed in Proverbs 31 from the Bible to judge Hester's virtues.
Curated OER
Flicking Football Fun
Young mathematicians fold and flick their way to a deeper understanding of statistics with a fun, hands-on math unit. Over the course of four lessons, students use paper footballs to generate data as they learn how to create line...
Syracuse University
Civil War
What was it like to enlist as a soldier in the Civil War? By using enlistment papers, young scholars consider this question. After they've looked at the primary source and discussed it, they create a short story of a fictional soldier to...
University of North Carolina
Verb Tenses
Twelve categories of verbs exist in the future tense, ranging from simple present to future perfect progressive, but only three have a place in academic writing. Those three tenses make up the content of an informational handout that...
ReadWriteThink
Looking for the History in Historical Fiction: An Epidemic for Reading
Combine informational reading skills with fictional text in an innovative historical fiction lessons. After reading a fictional text related to diseases, class members read non-fictional text to gain knowledge about specific infectious...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
The depth of Nineteen Eighty Four is in the details. Encourage a close reading of Orwell's dystopian classic with resource sheets that focus attention on the author's stylistic choices that lead to the betrayals that make Big Brother's...
Star Wars in the Classroom
"Shakespeare and Star Wars": Lesson Plan Day 4
Class members have an opportunity to compare how a film and a play handle the same source material by viewing the opening chapters of George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope and acts I and II of Ian Doescher's play, William Shakespeare's...
Core Knowledge Foundation
Unit 7: Poetry
Over the course of a 12-lesson language arts unit, young scholars analyze a variety of poems taking a close look at figurative language and tone. They learn to compare and contrast, improve comprehension, and identify settings. To...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Close Reading in the Classroom
Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...
Curated OER
The Great Gatsby: Symbolic Story Representation
The themes of The Great Gatsby are embodied in the images F. Scott Fitzgerald creates. To encourage reader interaction with the text, individuals create a symbolic representation of themselves, place themselves in the story, and consider...
Curated OER
Poetry Assignment
As the culminating activity in a unit study of poetry, class members demonstrate what they have learned about poetry by creating a notebook containing original poems they have written, published poems they enjoy, and analyses of these...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Accompany a reading of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a thorough literature packet. Although the materials are meant to prepare readers for a timed essay, the background information and the activities are sure to engage...