How affected is Thinks Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe's personal biography? Using a four corners strategy, and evidence from their readings, class members debate the degree of biographical influence in Achebe's novel.

What is the most effective way to teach scholars how to write a research paper? Educators explore the topic with the AP® English Language and Composition exam resource. The reference material guides teachers in best practices for...

Calling all experts! Using the educational resource, pupils work together in small expert groups, reading an article about the 2010 Haiti earthquake. As they read, they record two main ideas and supporting details from the text.

Following an online activity, scholars listen to a read-aloud of If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma. Pupils discuss their family traditions and complete a T-chart comparing the holiday then and now. Collages are made to...

Readers use Bloom's Taxonomy to create multi-level questions about Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. 

Here's a calendar that helps readers keep track of the major events in The Wednesday War.

For decades, the sight of blue books has struck fear in the hearts of collegians. Those books usually signal an essay exam, the topic of one of the handouts in a larger series on specific writing assignments. Using the handout, writers...

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...

Scholars examine the first Thanksgiving through books and interviews while they complete a KWL chart. Pretending they are part of the feast, learners craft a scrapbook page that features images related to their experience. Pupils reflect...

As part of their reading of The Hobbit, readers create a biopoem for one of Tolkien's characters.

Reading between the lines helps discover important information! The 11th lesson of a 22-part series on American history has scholars use historical thinking skills to uncover the deeper meaning behind the words on a page. Using backward...

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...

Why did they say that? What did they mean? How did they feel? Using the six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, challenge your young readers to answer the comprehension questions about chapters 41 and 42 of Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. Each...

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Young poets demonstrate their understanding of a character from Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street by crafting a biopoem that captures the essence of this person.

Chapter II of John Milton's Paradise Lost provides the text for a series of comprehension questions crafted using Bloom's Taxonomy.

After completing Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, readers research a topic of interest and prepare a five-minute presentation, and share their findings with the class.

The biopoem is a great way for instructors to get to know class members, classmates to get to know each other, and readers to flesh out their understanding of a character. Why not create a biopoem for a character from Oedipus the...

Emanuel Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Alexander Gardner's photograph of Abraham Lincoln. What do these works of art tell us about the character of these American Presidents? After examining the techniques the...

As part of their study of Out of the Dust, readers create a biopoem for one of the characters in Karen Hesse's 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel.

After researching an issue introduced in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, writers develop an original thesis statement and craft an analytic essay using evidence collected in their research.

The interactions between the Coureurs de bois (runners of the woods) and the First Nation Peoples as they engaged in the fur trade are the focus on this Canadian history exercise. Kids select learning centers based on their learning...