Scout Finch, the rough-and-tumble protagonist of Harper Lee's iconic To Kill a Mockingbird, learns quite a bit about how the world works as she observes her father's defense of Tom Robinson. Learn more about Scout and her distinctive...

Can romantic love and affection for family members all be characterized as simply Pavlovian reactions? Through fun cartoon graphics and animations, learn more about the psychological phenomenons that we may experience on a...

While we are all familiar with what happens when you turn on a light bulb, Albert Einstein was convinced that there was more happening than meets the eye. The video describes his extension of the research of others to ultimately...

Darkness. Murder. Emotion. These traits characterize expressionist theater. A video, number 38 on the Crash Course Drama and Theater playlist, discusses key themes and works from the period. An overview of Spring Awakening, which...

Romeo may appeal to more romantic students, but the broodier teenagers in your class are bound to relate to the melancholic, inward-facing Hamlet. Show an enthralling video that summarizes plot elements, characterization, and the...

Ghost by Jason Reynolds is a coming-of-age book that resonates with teenagers who have experienced childhood trauma. Explore the novel with an interactive resource that focuses on the author's use of symbolism, particularly with...

The famous length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace — 15 books and 365 chapters — presents a real challenge for many readers and their teachers. So why bother? Use a short video that argues for a reading of an unabridged...

What is Bloomsday? Why would thousands travel to Dublin on this day to visit sites depicted in a novel that is ridiculously hard to read? Why even bother with reading such a book? Find out by viewing a short video that suggests the...

Introduce science fiction fans to writer Octavia E. Butler with a short video that argues for why readers should add her works to their must-read list. 

Jenna and Barbara Bush, daughters of former President George W. Bush, and author Armistead Maupin share with viewers their reasons for selecting John Knowles' A Separate Peace as one of their favorite books.

One Hundred Years of Solitude introduces readers to magic realism. Told in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning novel is a candidate for The Great American Read program and aficionados...

Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2005. A short video provides insight into the many threads that form the tapestry of the prize-winning novel.

Adapting a much-beloved novel for the screen can be a tricky business. Each media has its own possibilities and limitations. The second PBS Jane Eyre resource in the Masterpiece series asks readers to evaluate how the filmmakers have...

As part of a study of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, class members compare the portion of Chapter IV, where Jane is criticized by Mrs. Reed and interrogated by Mr. Brocklehurst, with the film interpretation of the same scene.

Introduce readers to the great Jay Gatsby with a short video from the American Masters series. Narrators analyze how Fitzgerald's choice of narrator and point of view create the dreamlike qualities and near-mythic status of Jay Gatsby.

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is another novel high on the list of must-reads from The Great American Read collection. Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George  W. Bush, and John Green of Crash Course series fame share...

A clip from the documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth features Walker discussing her writing process and why she chose to write The Color Purple as an epistolary novel. The resource is part of PBS' American Masters...

“Authentic narrative is the glue that connects people.” So says the narrator of this short video who models for young journalists how to craft the questions and identify the sources that will yield the information needed to create a...

Launch a fiction writing unit with this video that encourages writers to craft their stories with language that permits readers to experience the illusions of their stories.

The brain is an especially complex organ. A PD lesson from the Good Thinking series discusses the importance of not isolating processes to the right or left side of the brain. The instruction uses specific examples to illustrate how...

Teach high schoolers about the difficult legacy of slavery in the United States with a video that summarizes the institution that stemmed from a cotton-based agriculture and economy. It details the brutality of slave...

Where would we be without bacteria? As it turns out, we owe them everything! Introduce young biologists to endosymbiotic theory using an amazing video from an extensive biology playlist. Scholars discover the bacteria that may be...

This lesson introduces characterization credibility. [7:54]

Students explore major themes and the importance of characterization in this excerpt from MASTERIECE's 2008 version of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. When the young and naive Tess Durbeyfield first meets her "cousin," the...