Break an article down with a SOAPSTone chart. Class members determine the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. The chart includes a question for each of these elements, provides some clarifying text for each, and...

Students read and analyze the poem, "My Last Duchess," by Robert Browning. They examine the use of dramatic monologue as a poetic device, and write a character profile of the Duke.

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lessoned by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My...

What skills do storytellers employ to bring to life the characters and events in their tales? After listening to a recording of a Haitian folk tale, class members consider how tone of voice, pace, and gestures can be used to enliven a...

As part of their study of set design, theater arts students put together what they have learned so far and create a thumbnail sketch of a set that they feel captures the style and mood they want to project. 

Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" is a bit of a puzzle. Critics have long debated Montresor's motives for killing Fortunato. Young scholars examine examples of the three types of irony (verbal, dramatic, and...

You will want to listen to the famous song, "Ironic," by Alani Morissette, after viewing this short PowerPoint. The three slides in this slideshow include a definition of irony, verbal irony, and dramatic irony. Tip: Ask your class to...

Celebrate our similarities and differences through multiple readings of Whoever you Are by Mem Fox. Readings are accompanied by a grand discussion, charts, creative art, dramatic, and music play to reinforce the uniqueness that is...

Students examine the role of tone in a comedy play. They also discover how to paraphrase a passage and explain a character's point of view.

Need to review literary terms/techniques with your class? The slides in this presentation define and give examples of 22 common literary terms. The PowerPoint could be used for AP test prep.

Students select and analyze quotations from Othello, and do a dramatic reading to illustrate the power of Iago's most poisonous words.

The set for a play combines design elements (style, line, shape, mass, measure, position, color, and texture) and principles of composition (unity, harmony, contrast, variation, balance, proportion, and emphasis) to create a particular...

In a hands-on learning activity, pupils read about and recreate the experience of Harriet Jacobs, author of one of the most famous slave narratives of all time in which she describes her years of hiding from her master in a confined...

Reader's Theater is a great way to build fluency, intonation, and dramatic flare. The class reads the theater piece, "The New Friends" paying attention to how they express emotion and feeling as they read. They discuss the use of plot,...

High schoolers examine denotation and connotation in language, and paraphrase a poem. They read and analyze a sonnet by iam Shakespeare, analyze the attitude and tone, paraphrase a poem, and create a thesis about a poem based on textual...

Students, utilizing video clips and Web sites, compare specific passages from original texts to moments in Broadway musicals on which they were based, analyzing similarities and differences between them. They adapt literature into a...

Students perform a reader's theater based on the Civil War. In this dramatic arts history lesson, students review the purpose of reader's theater and are given a script to read. The script can be based on an important Civil War figure....

Emerging orators distinguish between effective and ineffective public speaking strategies. They read a text that fits in with a Native Americans unit and speak about the text with both ineffective and effective volume, tone, phrasing,...

Ninth graders watch soap operas online.  For this English lesson, 9th graders explore the story elements of the soap opera.  Students write a journal on their own interpretations of characters. 

A free press is entitled to its opinions. While the news pages report the facts of events, editorial pages feature writers' and cartoonists' opinions about events to either directly or indirectly persuade. Introduce viewers to the art of...

Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

Students put themselves in the shoes of American Civil War soldiers. In this Civil War lesson, students examine letters from the time period written by soldiers, edit the letters for grammatical errors, and then present the letters to...

Students analyze and appreciate various types of poetry. In this poetry unit, students read classic and contemporary works to discover ways in which poetry expresses strong feelings. Students identify key vocabulary used to analyze...

Introduce young actors to the key elements of performance with this handout that defines key staging terms and activities.