Curated OER
Phineas Gage: Questioning Strategy
Focus on chapter two of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a questioning activity. After teaching and modeling several types of questions, learners work with partners and then independently to answer and...
Curated OER
Poetry: Basic Elements of a Poem
People who pen poetry positively need to know basic tenets and terms of poetry, like alliteration and consonance, for example. These and other terms are define and illustrated. Then viewers are given an object and asked to craft a...
Curated OER
Literary Terms
Seriously, 93 slides of literary terms? Yes, and well worth the time, although perhaps not all at once. The beauty here is in the concise, easy-to-understand definitions for such well-known terms as imagery and personification, as well...
Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Cognates (English III Reading)
Did you know that "30-40 percent of all words in English have a related word in Spanish?" This fact launches an interactive study of cognates appearing the same in English and Spanish. Learners demonstrate what they have learned about...
National Endowment for the Humanities
In Emily Dickinson's Own Words: Letters and Poems
Analyze the depth and beauty of American Literature by reading Emily Dickinson's letters and poems. The class analyzes Dickinson's poetic style and discusses Thomas Wentworth Higginson's editorial relationship with Dickinson. They pay...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
Pain and suffering do not have to be inevitable in a study of Crime and Punishment. A carefully scaffolded instructional activity introduces readers to the divided natures of the characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky's complex novel....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 1
Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Was Bias A Factor? Make an Argument
The ability to analyze an argument is a skill emphasized by the Common Core standards. Offer your class an opportunity to develop and hone their skills by providing them the testimonies in an Oregon court case. After reading the facts of...
Curated OER
An Introduction to Of Mice and Men
By collaborating on producing a product ad and slogan, learning partners demonstrate their understanding of the difference between connotative and denotative language. This week-long activity is designed to be used as an introduction to...
Pennington Publishing
Vocabulary Worksheet #1 & #2
These two worksheets cover several grammatical topics. Pupils work on words with multiple meanings, Greek and Latin word parts, word connotations, academic language, and more. The result is seven quick exercises that could be used...
Dr. Seuss Enterprises
Dr. Seuss in the Classroom
Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...
Mr. Ambrose
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...
Curated OER
Lincoln is in the House! ("Name-Dropping" Poems and the Power of Connotation)
“What’s in a name?” Just about everything. Barack Obama, Vincent van Gogh, Justin Bieber. Famous names evoke a multitude of reactions and poets often use the names of famous people in their works precisely because names carry...
Curated OER
Sentence Completion 20: High-Intermediate Level
Here's an exercise that will help learners develop their vocabulary. The eight sentence completion problems are followed by an answer key that explains why one answer is correct and why the other possibilities are not. Richly detailed,...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Close Reading in the Classroom
Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...
Curated OER
What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Conforming?
Dive into Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and determine what it means to conform in society, and discuss as a group with the thoughts and plans available in these documents. Included are multiple activities and brain targets that form the...
Curated OER
Word Pair Analogies 3
Designed for English language learners, but a good practice activity for all kids, this resource focuses on SAT words like saccharine, pragmatic, and precept. Effective scaffolding is provided here, as the last two questions require the...
EngageNY
Analyzing Text Structure: “Water Is Life” Paragraphs
Water, water everywhere. Readers revisit paragraphs six through nine in the article "Water is Life" to answer text-dependent questions. They then pair up to reread the article focusing on its structure and record their thoughts on...
Scholastic
Hold the Presses!: Revising for Connotation
Middle schoolers discuss the meaning of the sentence, The student asked to go to the office." Ask the class if the sentence gives the reader any information about the student. Can they visualize the way the student asked the question?...
Novelinks
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Vocabulary List
A staggering amount of work went into compiling this vocabulary resource for Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The overview provides a rationale for the strategy and information about tier 1, 2, and 3 words. The...
Santa Ana Unified School District
The Giver
Wouldn't it be great to live an a community without pain, without danger? Such a society is the goal of the community in The Giver. Using Lois Lowry's dystopian novel as the core text, class members read primary source materials...
EngageNY
Launching the Performance Task
This word or that, this picture or that. Individuals dive into the lives of The Little Rock Nine and the connotation used in the book A Mighty Long Way as they begin the performance task. The task scenario establishes literature lovers...
Curated OER
Elements of Poetry
Prepare your learners to identify figurative language in poetry. Tips for reading poetry and what to look for are listed on these slides. Rhetorical devices are defined and plenty of examples are given.
Curated OER
Magic Words, Magic Brush: The Art of William Butler and Jack Yeats
Students explore the influence of the landscape of Ireland on shaping the poetry of William Butler Yeats. They work in groups researching the growth of the Irish Nationalist Movement, Celtic origins, invasions, and the impact on the...