How do cultural and historical background impact thought? To explore this essential question, class members view of portion of the film, The Passage to India, read an excerpt from The Magician’s Nephew, and Nissim Ezekiel’s...

Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....

What's got 60 eyes, 150 fingers, and an endless number of ideas? Your language arts class! Challenge young writers to come up with clever riddles with an online poetry lesson.

Included in this resource are a variety of activities to do while reading Willa Cather's My Antonia. The activities, which range from mapping out Nebraska to writing activities about pioneer living, are all designed with one...

Sometimes words aren't the best way to get information across to the reader. The eighth handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series describes different type of figures and charts to display complex information in a paper....

Students engage in producing responses to "what" questions and their written responses will be recorded in a Travel Journal. They produce their respones using a word processor. This lesson is very detailed and a rubic is included.

Introduce your middle schoolers to a performance and movement activity that uses their favorite stories from fairytales and folklore. They practice basic acting skills, create dialogues with a partner, and then as guided practice,...

Mark Twain's life, politics, writing, and role as a mirror of pre- and post-Civil War American culture are the focus 11th and 12th graders in this section from an expansive author study. A critical writing assignment comparing Twain...

Learners read Spelldown, by Becky Mushko and consider how it portrays the Appalachian community. They define and discuss vocabulary presented in the story and write a comparison/contrast paper analyzing two of the story's characters. The...

Students read and analyze the poem, "To His Coy Mistress," by Andrew Marvell. They identify the theme of each stanza, complete a worksheet, take an online quiz, and write about a single metaphor or image from the poem.

Fifth graders develop and practice the steps involved in imaginative writing. They follow the steps/worksheets included and write imaginative stories of their own.

Students analyze the novel, "The Sound and the Fury," written by iam Faulkner, tracing the changing South. Through the narrative structure, the point of view, and the relationship between change and characterization, students view the...

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...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

Introduce your young thespians to the elements of drama! Key vocabulary helps them through their first week of class. The presentation outlines parts of a script, stage direction, and strategies for reading a script. Tip: The strategies...

Make your learners aware of the advantages and disadvantages of using different media in presentations. This straightforward resource evaluates media formations such as print, digital text, and videos. Although the subject of ballet is...

Inntroduce primary learners to essential critical reading strategies with an activity based on James Reeves' poem, "The Wind."  Learners listen as the poem is read, first as a riddle, and then re-read with the title visible. The...

How can you tell if a character is a villain? What about a hero? Work on literary analysis with an engaging language arts worksheet. After completing an activity about the four types of conflict, learners fill out a character map about a...

The stated goal of this unit is to use poetry to "improve the emotional health of young people." Budding poets read and then supply their own lines for poems that deal with alienation, loneliness, and rejection.

The Great Gatsby, The Jungle and study HRC's Teaching the American Twenties-The Dream Factory are the focus of this lesson, Your students will rewrite a small scene from the novel into a dramatic film scene and then create a modern...

If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...

Which comes first? The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, or Future? What clues can readers use to establish the chronology of A Christmas Carol? The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley, and Tiny Tim provides the text for an activity that...

To Kill a Mockingbird, Hunger Games, Brave New World. Welcome to Banned Books Week. As part of a study of censorship and book banning, class members investigate censorship, the purposes of censorship, and First Amendment rights,...

The SAT. The ACT. AP exams. The very mention of these exams can cause the college bound to feel anxious. One way to combat Test Anxiety is to provide high schoolers with models of these tests and give them opportunities to analyze...