Prompt your young historians to hone in their reading comprehension skills by considering the fascinating perspective that Rudyard Kipling offers in his poem, "The American Rebellion", which provides an alternative...

Imagine a dark sky lit up with fireflies. Robert Frost's "Fireflies in the Garden" instills a visual in the reader's mind of a star lit sky glowing with fireflies. After reading the poem, learners compare and contrast the image the...

Identify the rhyme scheme in a worksheet that features "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Readers use the nursery rhyme to reinforce poetic elements in four comprehension questions.

Build scholars' ability to understand their own values and learn about World War II at the same time. Scholars write poetry and discuss identity and place in depth with an in-depth social studies resource. 

Over three days, scholars listen to and read the poem, "Covers" by Nikki Giovanni. Learners complete a graphic organizer by sketching their visualizations from each stanza then discuss their pictures with a peer. Pupils answer...

Disagreements happen in a diverse democracy. It's what people do about these differences in a diverse society that the resource models. After listening to an eight-minute podcast about a woman who collaborated with people who have very...

The Buttonhook by Mary Jo Salter is the focus of a unit that explores the immigration experience to Ellis Island. First, scholars bring in an artifact that represents their heritage. A group-exercise allows them to share and discuss...

Maya Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise", offers young scholars an opportunity to consider how poets use literary devices to create powerful messages. After a close reading and discussion of the poem, class members reflect on how they can...

We are a tapestry woven of the threads of our family and its history, our environment, our ethnicity, and our culture. High school freshmen reflect on how these threads influence their goals for the future. After reading George Ella...

What are the effects of one's life experiences? Class members view a slam poetry reading, a speech by President Obama, and read a short story by John Steinbeck about responding to tragedies. They summarize these events and then craft a...

Make learning the definitions of literary terms memorable with a fun and engaging activity. Teams of scholars are given several terms and create an acrostic poem with simplified definitions and examples.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's poem "Learning to Read" is the focus of a lesson that teaches middle schoolers how to do a close reading of a text. The lesson introduces them to a brief biography of the poet, includes a video reading, and...

Just as Bud, from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, had rules to live by, so does the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, but how do the two relate? Pupils delve deep into the poem's third stanza, participate in a grand...

Audre Lorde's poem "From the House of Yemanjá" describes the speaker carrying two women on her back—she must be strong! Pupils read the second stanza using instructional activity 10 of 14 from the Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2 series....

How does poetry help people better understand societal issues? Pupils participate in a jigsaw activity to analyze poems from the novel Inside Out & Back Again. Next, they connect the poems to real-life refugee experiences from the...

Let's compare and contrast! Scholars use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the experience of reading a poem and listening to its audio version. Next, they complete graphic organizers, comparing two different genres: a poem and a...

What do modern voices sound like? Scholars explore the topic, reading two concrete poems from John Grandit's Blue Lipstick and analyzing them using a graphic organizer. Next, they read a third poem and work with partners to look for...

Get your pupils outside and teach them about peace at the same time! Scholars create a list describing peace, hike outside, add to that list, and later create poems. The exercises support differentiation for your individual classes as...

Robert Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" and John Keats' "Bright Star" provide the text for a two-part instructional activity in which class members analyze the effects of style on meaning in poetry. Randall Thompson's song cycle...

Individuals expressed the Harlem Renaissance in diverse forms of art, ranging from poetry to photography to painting. Learners explore pieces using a carefully curated collection from the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Included lessons ask...

Teach literary lovers how to form opinions about form. Scholars read informational text about the form used in villanelles. After analyzing the structure used in the poetry with graphic organizers and gallery walks, writers create...

Primary source texts provide scholars with the background information they need to understand why Chinese peasant farmers were driven to emigrate. After underlining keywords, phrases, and/or lines in the texts, individuals craft a...

Although some African American abolitionists—such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass—are well known, others, like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, remain in the shadows of history. Harper was a poet and activist who played an...

A Reading Adventure Pack focuses on rocks. Scholars participate in three activities after reading a fiction and nonfiction text—The Jade Stone, a Chinese folktale adapted by Caryn Yacowitz, and Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst....