Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Silly journal and essay prompts may be fun to write, but they don't model the kind of writing needed for college papers and standardized tests. The 15th part in a series of 24 covers the concept of reading to write—during and after...

Poetry is all about sound and rhythm. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the emotional atmosphere created by these elements and the literary devices poets use, compress whole stories into a few stanzas. The specialized...

Two sonnets provide seventh graders with examples of Shakespearean sonnets. After discussing the story of the poems and analyzing their rhyme scheme and rhythm, young poets craft a Shakespearian sonnet and share their work with two...

Get an idea of how your class members might perform on the Common Core tests with a comprehensive practice test. The assessment includes literary and informational passages for learners to read an analyze. Pupils respond to a series of...

Students read and compare excerpts from The Odyssey and The Adventures of Telemachus to create their own story based on a secondary character. In this literary analysis   lesson, students read and compare the excerpts from the...

Tenth graders use the novel To Kill a Mockingbird to analyze relationships in society. In this literature analysis instructional activity, 10th graders participate in a shoe activity where they bring in one shoe belonging to someone they...

Tenth graders  analyze the role of mentors, point of view, and prejudice using the texts of To Kill a Mockingbird and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this literature analysis lesson, 10th graders review Scout's...

In this literary analysis instructional activity, students respond to 6 short answer and essay questions based on the text of the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot.

In this novel analysis worksheet, students read Chapters 6 and 7 of Lord of the Flies and answer 16 reading comprehension questions about the chapters.

Young scholars complete close reading activities for Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In this Twelfth Night lesson, students read act two, scene three of the play and discuss the characters of Malvolio, Maria, Toby, and Andrew. Young...

In this reading comprehension worksheet, students read Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 of Lord of the Flies and answer 42 questions about the chapters.

Students compare and contrast the characters in the Monkey stories with the Wizard of Oz story.

Young thespians can try their hand at writing a script and acting out a scene, while gaining a deeper understanding of the universal topics presented in Shakespeare's wide array of plays. Begin the lesson by conducting a compare and...

Students complete research to enhance their reading of "The Grapes of Wrath". Using the text, they identify and locate cultural artifacts and discuss their symbolic connotations. As a class, they create a museum exhibit of the various...

Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...

In this novel analysis worksheet, students use the various sections with online links to complete activities about the novel 1984. Students explore domestic surveillance, the U.S. Patriot Act, online privacy, advertising, doublespeak,...

Use this simple collaborative activity to introduce the definition, art, and poetry of romanticism. Educators will have to provide the poetry, images of the art, and the survey for the learners, but by using this resource, they won't...

How is Louisiana connected to the Holocaust? After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders complete a research report about a survivor of the Holocaust who currently resides in Louisiana. Though the idea is a good way to...

Using Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Hart Crane's The Bridge as models, class groups first craft their own epic poems for 1900 and, using primary sources, create a multi-media presentation that captures the sights and...

Racist, independent, conflicted? Readers of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brainstorm words that describe the traits of characters in Twain’s novel and then rate these qualities in several of their favorite characters. Individuals...

Exploring the idea of working to achieve the American Dream, the class reads an excerpt from How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez. Following, the class analyzes the excerpt and discusses the theme of the reading using...

First graders take a look at schools of the past and present, and try to conjure an idea of what schools of the future will look like. After taking a walk around their own school and taking note of the buildings and the things that are...

Intended to be used along with the first chapter of An Introduction to Language textbook, this PowerPoint is full of linguistic terminology that is not necessarily explained. This tool can be used to complement a lecture or a text, but...