Introduce your freshmen to reading comprehension strategies and key literary elements with a year's worth of lessons and exercises. Each lesson focuses on a specific literary device and includes a definition of the term, a passage that...

A 10-page guide to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men includes a brief plot summary, information about preparing readers for the language in the novel, pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading questions, essay prompts, and project...

Expand your pupils' understanding of the short story genre with a study of John Updike and his story "A&P." This lesson, the fourth in a series of fourteen, invites learners to examine literary terms and read and discuss the story....

At over 450 pages, John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath can be a challenging choice for full-class, book circle, or independent reading. The activities in a 10-page sample The Grapes of Wrath...

Double, double scholars' appreciation of the Scottish Play with a guide that adds a rich brew of pre-reading background information, chapter discussion questions, activities, and writing prompts to provide readers with a "firm and good"...

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.

A reading of Kevin Lamb's short story "Lost in the Woods" launches a study of how writers use elements such as foreshadowing, mood, character development, setting, and conflict to engage readers. Class members then demonstrate what they...

Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" is the anchor text in a lesson that asks high schoolers to find examples of cause, effect, and foreshadowing in the tale. They then create a brochure advertising trips with Time Travel, Inc.

The manipulation of time is one of the most essential elements in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. As your language arts class participates in a jigsaw discussion activity, they work together to analyze the play's plot structure and...

Was Antony "transformed/Into a strumpet's fool," as Philo declares? (I, i) Was Cleopatra "green in judgment"? (I,5) A guide to Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's tragedy, provides instructors with a framework for teaching the play about...

Foreshadowing, flashbacks, and imaginary places are the three topics of focus in this two-lesson packet written especially for the book, Bridge to Terabithia. Each lesson also comes with worksheets and activities to support student...

Scholars explore the relationship between cipher keys and passwords and as they learn more about the Vigenere cipher and continue to read from the book Blown to Bits in the seventh lesson of the series. They conduct an activity where...

Chapter 12 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses Haley's narrative techniques, mainly how he uses point of view and foreshadowing to build interest and suspense. Class members read and annotate chapter 13 of the text as homework...

Paul Fisher, the main character in Tangerine, comes to see that it's the choices in life that lead to the consequences that make all the difference. A unit study of Bloor's young adult novel leads readers down this same path. 

As part of a study of figurative language Avi uses in his book, Crispin, individuals define the 10 terms listed on the learning exercise and then locate severals examples of each in the text of the novel.

What's the difference? Scholars analyze the similarities and differences between introductory and concluding paragraphs. Then, using a model essay as a guide, they write their draft position papers.