Whether or not your school/state has adopted the Common Core standards, you will want to add this resource to your Of Mice and Men curriculum materials. The chapter-by-chapter activities ask readers to provide evidence from the novella...

Working in groups, young historians review a war poem written by Stephen Crane. After reviewing the poem, they present an oral interpretation of the poem and hold a panel discussion about their analysis. The panel is made up of five or...

Explore the story The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph using this resource. Learners answer comprehension questions, fill in graphic organizers, and write a poem.

Your class can learn about Amelia Earhart and practice important comprehension skills here. Learners answer questions about cause and effect, compare texts, and discuss similes and metaphors after reading Amelia Earhart: Free in the...

Use the story "Bearstone" by Will Hobbs to explore issues related to growing up. In this work, a troubled teen finds himself through an adventure in the wilderness. Learners practice summarizing, drawing inferences and conclusions, and...

Share a classic novel with your class using this resource. After reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, learners answer questions involving the narrator's point of view, make and confirm predictions, and sequence events in the story.

Discuss the work of Matthew Henson, an African American who traveled to the North Pole with Robert Peary. After reading the story "Matthew Henson" by Maryann N. Weidt, learners answer questions by drawing inferences and conclusions,...

Combine informational reading skills with fictional text in an innovative historical fiction lessons. After reading a fictional text related to diseases, class members read non-fictional text to gain knowledge about specific infectious...

Here is an online interactive reading comprehension worksheet where pupils respond to 11 short-answer and essay questions based on War and Peace. They  may also access an online quiz on the selection using the link at the bottom of...

What makes a source primary or secondary? Middle schoolers read a definition of each term before exploring different examples and applying their knowledge to a research project.

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...

As an introduction to literary criticism, class members recreate I.A. Richards' close reading experiment. Individuals select a poem, paraphrase the story, focus on the imagery used, consider what the imagery adds to the tale, and...

Character analysis is a skill we use when we read literary works or want to write a good story. Learners will use drama to practice character analysis while focusing on the details that make characters act the way they do. They'll each...

Although the work Americans do has changed over time, the plight of the American worker has largely remained the same. Facilitate a class discussion aboutAmerican workers using Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and...

Numerous people from China immigrated to the US during the era of industrialization and expansion. Provide your class with a glimpse into the life of a Chinese immigrant through the poetry they left behind. They then compose a poem of...

It's that time of year to consider how Shakespeare selects his images and structures his Sonnet 73 to develop the meaning of the poem. Class members examine the rhyme scheme, the indented lines, the conceit, and the images used in each...

To better understand the Indian Removal Act of 1830, class members examine primary source documents including letters written by Alabama governors and the Cherokee chiefs. The lesson is part of a unit on the expansion of the United...

Begin your unit on Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles with an anticipation guide about literary themes. Class members read six statements about time, rules, and mortality, and note they believe each statement is...

Tackle Transcendentalist literature with these questions. This resource provides 14 essay questions that cover different works by Thoreau and Emerson. Class members may also access an online quiz on the selection using the link at the...

Readers apply Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious mind and the psychological approach to literary criticism to analyze and evaluate the relationship between two characters in A Separate Peace.

A speaker's attitude toward his or her subject matter determines the tone of a piece of literature. Interpret the tone of four different poems, as well as their meanings, with supporting textual details.

Water is the source of life. It appears in poetry in both peaceful and torrential descriptions; it appears in earth science in its liquid, gaseous, and solid states. Combine these interpretations of our planet's most precious and...

Art can enhance the understanding of history. That's the big idea in a lesson that has young scholars read Randall Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and an excerpt from John Hersey's Hiroshima, which provide a...

A lesson plan instills the importance of locating reliable sources. Scholars are challenged to locate digital sources, analyze their reliability, search for any bias, and identify frequently found problems that make a source unusable.