William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a treasure trove of symbolism and literary themes. Help your kids note the richest passages in the book with a lesson and graphic organizer. The lesson prepares kids to come up with a thesis...

Students explore the concept of design, and identify items in their lives that have been designed. They explore the concept of book design and create and arrange their own page layout.

This reading guide poses questions at the beginning, middle, and end of the reading of Ethan Frome. Readers focus on the setting, conflict, and resolution presented in the novel. 

How do your pupils believe others see them? Invite them to write narratives to explore the image they present to the word. The narratives, inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, are to be set at each pupil's hypothetical funeral.

Listening is a skill, and with the help of the communication activities in this packet, class members improve their active listening skills. 

Why is reading a text closely a helpful skill? Using the 13th of 20 lessons from the Grade 8 ELA Module 1, Unit 2 series, scholars continue reading the informational text "Refugee and Immigrant Children: A Comparison." They work with...

It's time to make some connections! Scholars complete a close reading of the speech I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr. They use an I Have a Dream Speech Gist Note-catcher, and I Have a Dream text-dependent questions to guide their...

Shelves filled with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. Bouquets of red roses. Racks of romantic cards. Stores are preparing for Valentine's Day. Has the holiday become too commercialized? That is the question asked by a lesson designed...

Watch your tone! Scholars analyze how diction in George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant contributes to the tone of the text. Readers watch a video, participate in a word splash, and work through a PowerPoint lesson to help them...

An informative physics lesson includes two teacher demonstrations, one on AC currents and the other on DC currents, allowing pupils to take notes while watching. The resource includes questions to assign as homework or...

Victor Laredo's painting "On the Beach" and Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem "Thanksgiving" allow young scholars to use their noticing skills. Class members identify elements of the painting the artist uses to create the feeling of...

Class members continue analyzing text excerpts from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. They read and draw conclusions to determine Douglass's view on slavery. Learners finish by discussing with partners how the excerpts...

While most Americans connect the celebration of Thanksgiving to a colonial celebration of pilgrims and Native Americans, the national holiday was actually the product of a war-time measure by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War....

An activity packet about food begins with reading two texts: Stone Soup by Marcia Brown or John Muth and Where Does Food Come From? by Shelley Rotner and Gary Goss. Learners then take part in three activities. They design a puzzle...

Scholars enter the midpoint of the unit and connect all the previous 16 lessons about the text "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." They complete a Mid-Unit Assessment that requires a multi-paragraph response to a writing prompt.

After reading Elie Wiesel's Night, watching the movie Life is Beautiful, and researching World War II, class members write a comparison essay on the book and film. This includes a prior knowledge activity, discussion in whole and small...

Delve into The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with a helpful study guide. Crossword puzzles, comprehension questions, character descriptions, chapter summaries, and vocabulary exercises connect readers with the classic text of a boy...

Gaining voting rights was difficult over the course of decades, but the debate over who should actually be allowed to cast a ballot remains. Scholars explore the history of the struggle, including the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments,...

As part of a study of how writers structure their text so that readers understand events, class members do a close reading of "Is It Lawful to Make Slaves of Others Against Their Will?" a chapter in Aronson and Budhos' Sugar Changed the...

Find clues to the past with photos! Young historians use a photo from one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protests to practice photo analysis. Academics look at the image to gain clues about what is happening and why. To finish,...

Let's get opinionated. Scholars participate in a peer critique and revision process using a fun activity called a Four Corners strategy. After incorporating classmates' feedback, individuals share their final drafts of their opinion...

Students explore writing techniques by comparing fiction vs. non-fiction. In this literature analysis lesson, students read stories from Aesop's Fables and compare the themes and characters to stories from their own life. Students...

Twelfth graders identify and analyze examples of rhetorical devices as valid or invalid inferences. For this text analysis lesson, 12th graders research a controversial topic in teams and identify rhetorical devices for the topic....

Pupils discuss cause and effect relationships and the chain reaction involved before listening to the story "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears". Students create flow charts to show the chain reactions of causes and effects in the...