Art can express acts of injustice and move society to action. Upper graders analyze contemporary art relating to specific moments in history. They discuss propaganda, anarchy, sociology, and violence as activism. After researching and...

How can something be true even if it didn't happen? Invite your classes to investigate the truths found in the world of magical realism as they analyze short stories, poems, informational texts, video, and art from this genre.

What do Robert Downey Jr., Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Fritz Weaver, Roger Moore, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Daffy Duck have in common? Why, it’s elementary, my dear Watson! They all have portrayed Sherlock Holmes. Literary detectives...

Class members compare the final 30 minutes of Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope with Act V of Doescher's play, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope and consider how the choice of media influences viewers' impression...

A degree in communications incorporates disciplines such as business, law, and media as well. A writing handout offers prospective communications majors information about what kind of assignments to expect in a typical course....

Integrate history, math, and art into a study of The Grapes of Wrath with a series of activities that ask learners to investigate the social, political, economic, and environmental factors at play during the 1930s. Designed to be used...

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their eyes Were Watching God has been highly praised and severely criticized for its depiction of African American folk culture. A set of primary source materials, including photographs, articles, essays, and...

Students develop reading strategies: inferring meaning from context. They work together in order to negotiate the meaning of the various vocabulary items. Students predict the personality of the main character in each of the books.

Five quick questions ask about quotes and characters from Shakespeare's Henry V. Give this quiz to your students as a warm-up or diagnostic test.

Students explore the Holocaust by reading the book "Until We Meet Again" and viewing the film "Devil's Arithmetic". They identify the political, economic and social context of the Holocaust and complete a research project on a real...

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 not let Julius Caesar be Greek to your pupils. Rather, make the play a dish fit for hungry minds. Encourage your class members to lend their ears to a series of rich discussion questions so that they can become masters of the play, as...

This was written for ESOL learners, but could work for any elementary class. Learners read about the American dance style known as Square Dancing. They explore its use in literature, write a friendly letter about it, and then use their...

Great literature discussions are a consequence of carefully crafted questions, interpretative questions that permit more than one response, and responses supported by specific evidence from the text. The discussion questions in a guide...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

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...

Upper graders can read all about the origins of modern drama. Each slide provides a paragraph of information related to key players, art movements, and time periods that shaped modern drama. It relates well to many aspects of literature...

Class members may "think themselves accurs'd" when they first hear of an assignment that asks them to create a motivational speech. After studying the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V; however, they will count...

In this primary history worksheet, students sharpen their research skills as they study the history of the Vikings beliefs and stories. Students select 1, 2, 3, or 4 extension projects to complete.

Quite a few movies are somewhat based on Shakesperean plays. Can you match them correctly? The title of a movie is given with four Shakespeare play titles to choose from for each question.

Students explore various intellectual traditions which dominate human history through a variety of contemporary pieces of literature which exemplify the traditions. Biblical monotheism, Greek rationalism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism...

Students review themes they have seen so far in their study of poetry. They compare four poems and one set of song lyrics as they search for meaning in each. They compare and contrast all five and then give a presentation of their...

Third graders research ways in which plants are essential to humans. In this Global Peace activity, 3rd graders participate in tasks, such as creating a propaganda poster. Students may watch the film, The Lorax, as a closing activity.

Students read the information in order to identify ways to complete a literature analysis. In this literature analysis instructional activity, students read paragraphs and practice using the five questions.