Musicals have been adapted from stage plays, novels, and movies. With The Lion King, Disney transforms its animated film into show-stopping, live-action musical theatre. The guide Disney provides to accompany a study...

Smart Solutions is the theme of a unit created to meet the needs of English language earners. Through a series of lessons, scholars follow a routine—move, speak, and listen— to cover topics including stores, shops, celebrations, pets,...

How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...

English language development lessons are brought to you in poems, picture cards, and grand discussions in a We Can Do It! themed unit. Topics of discussion include daily challenges, parts of a whole, words that describe what we...

Celebrate sean-nós, céilí, and the lilting music of the Emerald Isle with a set of language arts activities! Learners complete word puzzles, vocabulary exercises, and comprehension questions about traditional Irish music.

While music lyrics are often used to teach literary elements, the richness of this resource comes from the wealth of exercises, activities, and support materials provided in the packet.  Although designed for gifted learners, the...

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...

Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...

Aladdin, Disney's Broadway musical comedy, is a magic carpet ride. Prepare your class for a field trip to the show with a study guide that is a treasure trove of activities, cultural connections, and background information.

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.

Take poetry off the page and put it into terms of movement, physical space and, finally, music with this series of three lessons from the Smithsonian Institution. This resource introduces students to two poetic forms that originated as...

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the most frequently cited novel for the Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Open Response Question. Those new to using the book and and veterans as well will find the teaching strategies, the...

Water is the source of life. It appears in poetry in both peaceful and torrential descriptions; it appears in earth science in its liquid, gaseous, and solid states. Combine these interpretations of our planet's most precious and...

Eliminate all doubt when it comes to sentence structure with nine thorough lesson plans. Whether you want your young writers to vary their sentence structure or shore up their knowledge of conjunctions and semicolons, these lessons are a...

In his 2013 introduction to Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman states, “Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” In this extraordinary unit plan, readers "explore the power of written language to educate and...

Tone is a tough topic to teach to teenagers. But never, fear, help is here in the form of a unit plan that takes advantage of their interest in music to set the stage for a series of activities that lead them to understand how setting,...

Looking to engage scholars in poetry with hands-on activities? What better way than making masks? Readers analyze literary devices in poetry, examine Native American masks, create their own masks, and then write poems to tell its story!

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.

Jazz and the City, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz and Gender, Jazz and Literature, Jazz and the Arts, Jazz and Film. Here's a packet of unit plans organized around themes that reflect American culture. Each unit examines how...

Consumer technology has made it possible for filmmakers to create entire movies from the comfort of their home computer. Guide high school film buffs through the process of designing a documentary with an extensive unit published by...

Gulliver's Travels tells the story of a man who goes on voyages and encounters strange people. A unit plan introduces readers to the classic text, as well as excerpts from other examples of sarcasm and satire, such as "A Modest...

Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...

The Grapes of Wrath may be the most famous novel set during the Dust Bowl, but what other stories cover the same time? The unit focuses on the Karen Hesse novel Out of the Dust. Learners keep a timeline of the Dust Bowl, maintain a...

Accompany a novel study of Hatchet by Gary Paulson with a unit consisting of 16 lessons focused on physical and emotional survival. Reading the story along with a variety of informational texts, scholars compare and contrast reading...