It can be difficult to refer back to a text when analyzing it, so annotation is a great tool for kids to track what they are reading. A thorough and well-organized lesson guides learners through the process of annotating William...

Post-It notes, highlighting, underlining. Sam Anderson’s New York Times Magazine article, “What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text,” launches a study of “marginalia,” or writing thoughts in the margins of a text. After...

Get deep! Teach scholars how to make connections between texts to deepen their understanding of a topic. Using the resource, pupils read and annotate a short informational text about Sudan's Civil War and refugee crisis. Next, they...

In general, pupils are not allowed to write in school-issued books; however, they can write on a bookmark that you provide! Kids can take notes on the setting, characters, themes, and connections as they read a short story or novel.

The intricate craft of narrative writing can make a happy story feel exuberant or a sad story feel devastating. With 42 extensive lessons that include poignant discussion questions, standards-aligned self-reflections, engaging writing...

Guide your readers to explore character traits. As a class, discuss and record the traits of a commonly-known fairy tale character. Then do the same with the main character in the class novel. Finally, have learners use magazines...

The second lesson plan in the Lord of the Flies unit asks scholars to consider the characteristics of a good leader. After generating a list of these qualities, they annotate a passage from the novel highlighting the leadership qualities...

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...

Learners study and explore the portrayal and development of a major character in a novel from the novel, "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens. They identify words and phrases that effectively describe the main character in this novel....

The Great Gatsby has become one of the most iconic novels in American literature. An eBook allows readers to access the full text of the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. With the original words and paragraph breaks intact, new...

A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to...

Good readers make connections between texts. The SAT regularly assesses the ability to make those connections using paired reading passages, a topic discussed in an official SAT practice lesson plan on synthesis. During the lesson,...

Start with the question in mind with a discussion activity on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. With four focus questions, note-taking prompts, and discussion points, readers practice answering thematic questions based on textual evidence.

Does identity come from within, or do external forces shape it? Explore the complex identity concept with a two-unit module for 12th-grade language arts. The first unit uses A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and "A Daily Joy...

While wisdom may not be communicated, knowledge of sentence structures certainly can. Teach young grammarians the power of syntax with a lesson that uses Herman Hesse's Siddhartha as a mentor text. Learners first rewrite captions for an...

After completing Chapter 5 of Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, readers make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to Victor Martinez's novel by crafting journal entries addressing comments and questions to characters in...

How does a society influence and shape individuals? Class members ponder this essential question as they read Lord of the Flies, as well as primary source materials about the historical background of the novel. As a...

Readers consider comparisons between the Dinka and Nuer tribes in South Sudan, making connections between an informational article about Sudanese tribes and the novel A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. They annotate the text to help...

What cultural concepts must readers understand in order to connect to Things Fall Apart? As part of their study of Chinua Achebe’s novel, class members research Nigeria and the Igbo culture to create a collaborative, web-based,...

Excerpts from classic novels make great material for standardized tests. A sample English language arts examination, part of a larger set of assessments, mixes excerpts from classic novels and more modern texts. The test includes three...

Text annotations help readers track essential ideas. Pupils continue reading and annotating an informational article about Sudanese tribes, connecting it with A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. They also begin writing about their...

Author, filmmaker, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was also a dialectologist. The dialogue of the characters in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God reveals her fascination with accents and dialects. A short video from the Great...

Students complete poetry analysis using William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" as a part of a study of figurative language. In this Shakespearean language lesson plan, students define literal and figurative language and practice paraphrasing...

Students complete close reading activities to analyze Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. In this literary analysis lesson, students analyze key quotations from Ethan Frome and respond to contemporary reviews of the text. Students use textual...