Scholars use technology to explore poetry and its related elements, such as theme, figures of speech, and other literary devices. They complete four poetry projects including a poem analysis with a concept web, an interactive poem...

Aspiring writers complete and discuss fill-in-the-blank cliché expressions, define cliché as a form of predictable writing, take cliché expressions and turn them into new, unpredictable ones, read poetry that illustrates writer's use of...

Get online and explore idioms. Your class will use the Internet to locate, choose, and illustrate their favorite idioms. They make a class PowerPoint with illustrations for their idioms and explain the meaning of each. A great way to...

Work on literal and figurative meanings with a lesson focused on Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" and "The Road Not Taken." Readers identify the literary devices used by the poet to set the poems' themes, settings, and narrative...

Learners read and explore one of Emily Dickinson's nature poems, "A Bird Came Down the Walk-" through interaction with a variety of art forms. Clips of a hymn to hear meter and the viewing of bird images exposes them to the language and...

Improve your young poets' descriptive writing with this lesson on personification. A SMART board and PowerPoint presentation guide your class through the process of identifying human qualities attributed to various non-human objects. A...

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...

Film poems? To concluded a poetry unit, writers select one of their own poems and create a film that brings to life the sounds and images of their work. Included with the detailed unit plan are daily lessons, student examples, a list of...

Learn about how the seeing eye dog program began with a reading instructional activity about Eva Moore's chapter book, Buddy, The First Seeing Eye Dog. With vocabulary words, discussion questions, and extension resources, the...

A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...

Young scholars explore the book Billy Brown and the Belly Button Beastie. For this verb, onomatopoeia, and syllable lesson, students pantomime verbs, read onomatopoeia from the story and clap out syllables. Young scholars unscramble...

Most of us have heard of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But what about Claudette Colvin, Virginia Durr, Freedom Summer, or the Birmingham Children's Crusade? A five-lesson unit prompts class...

What do spiders' legs and an octopus's eyeball have to do with metaphors? The fourth lesson plan in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl uses disgusting foods to teach about metaphoric writing.

Students read the poem "Ode to Pablo's Tennis Shoes" and analyze the form, figurative language, and mood. They complete a T-chart containing what they have learned about Pablo and the evidence from the poem supporting their conclusions.

Learners examine the impact of sound devices in poetry. In this poetry lesson, students read the listed poems and identify uses of hyperbole, simile, metaphor, imagery, and personification. Learners discuss how sound devices enhance poetry.

Young writers read excerpts from Gary Paulsen's memoir to identify figurative and literal language that contain sensory details. They determine which selections are examples of sensory language and fi the language is used literally or...

Middle and high schoolers examine the impact of irony in poetry and prose. In this figurative language activity, they read instructor-selected literature and identify uses of irony. Then they discuss how irony enhances literature.

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Who or what do you miss? That's the question that launches an activity that asks writers to craft a paragraph filled with sensory details that shows how they feel. Next, they listen to Richard Blanco reading his poem, "Translation for...

Dander from the show Twisted Whiskers and characters from My Little Pony are featured in this three part lesson that explores using story pyramids to scaffold ideas, adding sensory details to enrich writing, and editing using common...

Participate in writing poetry as a group. Focused on a given theme, young writers compose a popcorn poem using sensing verbs and adverbs. They write popcorn poems, onomatopoeias, collective poems, and diamond poems. You could introduce...

Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed lesson plan outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and focus on the...

A shirt can't really swallow you—right? Readers find examples of symbolism and personification in S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders with two straightforward lessons.

Following a brief mini-instructional activity on using dialogue in fiction, young writers continue day two of their writing workshop. They work on the second half of their Children's Book Storyboards, and then they turn and talk with...