Young scholars discover Native American culture by creating masks.  In this customs instructional activity, students create their own masks in class from plaster and paint.  Young scholars perform a skit in front of their...

Students investigate the 5 senses by reading children's literature. For this descriptive writing lesson, students read the story The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, analyzing the story and characters as they go. Students identify the use of...

After hearing John Mellencamp's song "Small Town," 4th graders are introduced to a brief biography/history of John Mellencamp. They will perform the entire song at the annual 4th grade program at the school.

High schoolers discover the group dynamics necessary to produce an American musical in this six day lesson. Themes and characterization techniques are explored during collaborative small group research projects.

Students analyze cowboy literature. In this United States history and literacy lesson plan, students listen to a variety of cowboy songs and poetry, view the video "Rediscovering America: The Real American Cowboy," and view related...

Young scholars explore the life and works of black American playwrights to gain insight into how their works reflect and influence the black American experience.

Students study late twentieth-century African American satirical literature as well as its cultural antecedents. they analyze and discuss, within the contexts of race and gender, the social criticism of the middle classes presented by...

Learners create and perform folktale plays. In this reader's theater and Asian literature lesson plan, students work in groups to rewrite Asian folktales into scripts and perform the folktales for their class in a Reader's Theater. ...

High schoolers make reference to previously presented material,

Students explain that a landscape painting may or may not accurately represent a specific place. They identify techniques that create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface.

Students visit websites about the books, authors, and illustrators who received the King awards. They view illustrations from Kadir Nelson's award winning book Ellington Was Not a Street. They read excerpts from books and author interviews.

Young scholars read Duke Ellington by Andrea Davis Pinkney. They complete a variety of cross-curricular activities surrounding the life of the 20th century composer. Included are reading, art, math, science, writing, social studies, and...

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...

To better understand the cultural achievements of the Harlem Renaissance and become familiar with its major figures, class members examine a painting by Aaron Douglas and a poem by Langston Hughes and compare how the artists develop...

Here are two great lessons that work together and are inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Young writers and actors will retell the story of "The Frog Prince" through games, improvisational script writing, and...

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...

This was written for ESOL learners, but could work for any elementary class. Learners read about the American dance style known as Square Dancing. They explore its use in literature, write a friendly letter about it, and then use their...

Students explore Stephen Sondheim's contributions to musical theatre in the context of the dramatic cultural shift that occurred in American life in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Students survey bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop. They explore how bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop reflected American culture and society in the 1940s and 1950s.

Students study the effect of history on fictional or dramatic works of art by reading, Arthur Miller's, The Crucible. They examine the ties between a nation's history and culture with the literature it produces.

Students survey free jazz and fusion. They explore how free jazz and fusion reflected American culture and society in the 1960s and 1970s.

Upper graders can read all about the origins of modern drama. Each slide provides a paragraph of information related to key players, art movements, and time periods that shaped modern drama. It relates well to many aspects of literature...

Students develop imagery in literary and art works. They discuss Jacob Lawrence's painting, the "Tombstones, 1942", which conveyed overcrowded tenements and families living in Harlem (New York, New York). They design picture stories...

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...