Parental relationships have a huge impact on our personalities, for better or for worse. Read about Mike's relationship with his father in H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights and how it informed the novel's central idea.

Benjamin Franklin famously had an aphorism for every situation—most of which we still use in modern vernacular. Introduce class members to Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack with a presentation that details the characteristics of aphorisms.

Looking for a resource that models how to read and analyze a poem? Check out this packet that uses sections of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" to demonstrate how to paraphrase, note literary elements, and identify the poet's inferences.

Students, as a final project, draw a picture of their ideal neighborhood on a sunny day. In addition to the sun, their drawings include homes, trees, streets, and selected objects. Each object in their drawing has a written description...

Students read several selections of folktales from different historic periods and different cultures. Then they incorporate a folktale theme into a modern day story, using elements that parallel those from the original version.

Students determine that all families create and pass on folklore. They research stories of their own names and draw parallels between their own and others' naming traditions. They infer characteristics of their communities' history...

For this diagonal lines worksheet, students practice drawing diagonal lines in the middle of parallel diagonal lines. Students draw three diagonal lines.

Students begin the lesson with a review of the elements of poetry. Individually, they read a variety of poems and literature one white and one black author focusing on decay, sterility and alienation. They identify these images within...

Students take a closer look at the organization of written pieces. In this writing skills lesson plan, students examine transitions, repetition, parallelism, and other organizational patterns in writing. 

Learn that stories have three parts by paralleling the introduction, the body and the conclusion to the life of an athlete competing in the Winter Games.

Students find alternatives to conflicts that they, may confront in their everyday lives Through the use of literature, students are given opportunities to use parallel tasks that will instruct them on how to identify and correct their...

Students edit scenes from Shakespeare's The Tempest in documentary fashion and perform their edited scripts. In this play analysis instructional activity, students read through Act 2 and 3 and discuss how and why to cut lines in a play....

Pupils research the parallel development and complexity of writing and civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. In this ancient Mesopotamia lesson, students analyze the Cuneiform writing system in ancient Mesopotamia and how the civilization...

Students assess the diversity of the photographs taken by a Czech photographer, that illustrate how existed in 1920's Texas. Then students compare and contrast these photographs with more current photographs of Texans and evaluate in...

Hold a discussion in writing about coping strategies to prepare your pupils for reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman. After journaling, pupils come up in an organized fashion and write...

Finding and/or designing a menu of equally weighted synthesizing projects to end a unit can be a challenge. Simplify the task with this menu of individual and group projects meant to accompany a study of The Crucible. Presentations,...

African American spirituals served as more than songs of religious praise during the years of slavery. "Go Down, Moses" is featured on a worksheet that asks readers to respond to a series of short-answer prompts about the spiritual.

Add a great resource to your collection of The Grapes of Wrath curriculum materials. A thorough packet contains loads of useful suggestions, whether you use the novel as an anchor text, as a reading circle...

Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...

What do Johann Sebastian Bach and Miles Davis have in common? Much more than class members might imagine. The comparison of these two famous composers is just one lesson in a unit that investigates many facets of the music industry...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Any classroom study of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved requires careful planning and scaffolding. A primary source set that includes a video, illustrations, photos of artifacts, and a broadside of the Fugitive...

Dante Alighieri's "The Inferno" is the central text in a unit designed for high school seniors. Scholars compare the Christian concept of Hell to Dante's. In addition, they examine the tale as an example of epic poetry, as an allegory,...

In this classifying triangles worksheet, 10th graders solve 9 various problems that classify triangles into categories. First, they refer to the figure shown of an isosceles triangle with two line parallel. Then, students name the sides,...