Ninth graders work together to discuss the various experiences of African Americans during the Civil War. Using the internet, they identify the laws and reasons African Americans were allowed to join the Union Army. Using their...

Students experiment with illuminating important text.  In this fictional literature lesson, students research Shakespearean sonnets.  Students identify key elements of the sonnets, and examine the relationship between...

Provides a number of questions that students can ask themselves about a literary passage when doing a "Close Reading" and following this with an organized piece of writing. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5

This strategy guide focuses on planning and implementing close reading of complex text in the primary grades which fosters progressively deeper thinking as students become more responsible for their own learning. It offers a step-by-step...

Learn and practice close reading strategies to help increase your understanding of how to approach challenging and complex texts.

This activity focuses on close reading, the careful, sustained reading of a text. One strategy to help you read closely is to ask yourself questions such as What is your overall impression of the passage? What mood does the passage...

A brief explanation of the tasks involved in doing a close reading in preparation for writing. This writer breaks the process into three steps which involve annotating the text, looking for patterns, and asking questions of the text.

As you read through the texts in this lesson, you will practice close reading strategies to help you understand a writer's tone. You'll be examining the writer's choice of diction, details, and irony to identify the writer's attitude.

In this lesson, students practice close reading strategies to help them understand a writer's tone. They will examine the writer's choice of diction, details, and irony to identify the writer's attitude.

Teachers will learn about the importance of close reading. Teachers will learn how to implement close reading; measure progress of close reading; and find research to support close reading. A list of close reading activities are also...

This instructional video demonstrates ways to incorporate "close reading" with complex text. [56:53]

This guide is written for college students, but should be very useful for upper level high school students as well. The writer first describes fourteen steps to take in doing a close reading, then provides six pieces of advice on how to...

In this lesson, students practice reading closely so that you can identify the choices that help create tone, diction, and irony.

[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Through this practice lesson, students will learn how to interpret poetry. They will learn how to spot a metaphor, to identify imagery, and be introduced to the terms...

Doing the exercises in this lesson will help students comprehend the poet's meaning by giving them practice in finding imagery, metaphors, symbolism, and allusions. RL.9-10.9 alllusions to other works.

This lesson plan teaches students to consider diction, syntax, literary devices, and rhetorical strategies in doing a close reading of Shakespeare's sonnets.

This site discusses the four types of reading: Linguistic, Semantic, Structural, and Cultural and offers a detailed example of close reading. RL.11-12.3 Auth choice story elem, RL.11-12.5 Choice of Text Structure

This lesson will help you comprehend the poet's meaning by giving you practice in finding imagery, metaphors, symbolism, and allusions.

[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] As you work through this lesson, you will learn how to interpret poetry. You will learn how to spot a metaphor, you will learn to identify imagery, and you will be introduced...

Read carefully in order to identify allusion, imagery, metaphor, and symbolism and to evaluate their impact on the meaning of a text. RL.9-10.9 alllusions to other works.

"Lyrical Ballads" grew out of the friendship and artistic collaboration between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In this lesson, young scholars will explore a number of the poems in light of Wordsworth's key philosophies,...

For this lesson, students will consider several aspects of Oscar Wilde's most popular of comedies, "The Importance of Being Earnest". The success of this play is in part due to its examination of moral principles - in this case, the...

In this activity, students will consider the context within which Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. The poem immediately captured the public imagination, where it has remained, testimony to heroic failure,...

Through these teaching ideas, students are encouraged to explore William Blake's innovative approach to creating and displaying his poetry, developing their understanding of the multi-talented individual whose poems and artwork continue...