“Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” These two views of war, embodied in George Patton’s statement and Lorraine Schneider‘s famous 1966...

You've hit the second grade Common Core jackpot! Find over 40 pages of curriculum designed specifically for the standards, both math and language arts. Printable versions of each standard can be used as learning displays, and...

Discuss the importance of a lead in writing with your upper graders. They examine several examples of leads from literature and practice writing leads for pieces of artwork. They then select a topic from a list and write an introductory...

A tea party in Wonderland? An East Egg brunch with Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Nick? Breakfast with Miss Havisham, Lady Macbeth, and Abigail Williams? Or dinner with Andre, Hamlet, and Randle Patrick McMurphy? Class members select a favorite...

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...

A painting is worth a thousand words—in a different world! Lucy and Edmund sail away into Narnia using a picture of a ship at sea. The story tells of their adventures and the islands they visit. Scholars work through activities about the...

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, can seem strangely prophetic when compared to modern news events and politics. Readers of Orwell's dystopian classic sharpen their critical thinking skills by engaging in...

Sor Juana, considered one of the first feminist writers and a great Latin American poet, is the topic and inspiration for this excellent lesson. Use the introduction, guiding questions, and learning objectives to lead your class into a...

Here is an inventive, and educationally rich way to conduct a literature study of the book, The Midwife's Apprentice. After the book has been read, learners get into three groups. One group is assigned the task of being the writers....

Just like in real life, characters in short stories show their true personalities through their words and deeds. Decipher the character development in Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with a set of activities...

The second module in a series for high school seniors focuses on tracking the central idea of a text across genres and from multiple author and character perspectives. Twelfth graders read a speech by Benazir Bhutto entitled "Ideas Live...

Japan's Taisho Period was a time when authors like Akutagawa and other Japanese modernists began to experiment with point of view and literary form, making the literature produced during this time period a natural choice for teaching...

Do students really need to be taught how to read cartoons, comic books, and comic strips? Yes. Just as they need to learn how to read other forms of graphic text such as diagrams, photos, timetables, maps, charts, and tables. Young...

Ninth graders examine how literature connects to real-life and see how irony aids in the development of theme. They read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and discuss elements of foreshadowing and situational irony. Then learners will write...

Focusing on Doppo's "Unforgettable People" and late nineteenth century Japanese literature, this resource also leads to discussions of form being dictated by content. Explore the development of new literary styles first-hand by...

High schoolers form opinions about children and television censorship after analyzing literature. They complete a journal writing activity to identify the topic and make a list of inappropriate television shows for children. Next, they...

Young scholars study Greek literature. In this Greek tragedies lesson, students explore the dance-dramas of Martha Graham. Young scholars study the choreography that brings ancient Greek literature to life.

Encourage your readers to make connections between texts with this resource. After compiling notes for each text read (you choose the texts), groups craft skits in which major characters from each text meet. There is a rubric for the...

Explore the components of rhythm and form through a reading of Jean Marzollo's I Spy books. After discussing Marzollo’s format, the class agrees upon a theme for a class book and topics that fit with that theme. Pupils write a poem,...

What was the relationship like between George and Martha Washington? To protect their privacy, Martha Washington destroyed all her husband’s letters after his death so historians have little evidence of their lives together. Two letters...

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...

Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms...

High schoolers discover the true meaning of karma and the related concept of samsara by reading the Jataka Tales. Learners work in groups to become familiar with one form of Buddhist storytelling and examine how Jataka Tales are used as...