Is CTE the right choice for me? Introduce the class to career and technical education through an exploratory activity, fourth in a series of six career readiness activities. After an introductory video, scholars determine possible...

How can you tell if a number of items is reasonable? Combine math and language arts with a fun lesson based on Jeff Shepard's The Right Number of Elephants. After reading the book, kids discuss amounts of other items and create...

Now what? Class members continue their close reading of Ethan Canin’s short story “The Palace Thief,” focusing on Hundert's feelings about his retirement, and consider what these feelings reveal about his character.

Do our childhood circumstances significantly shape us? As the close reading of “The Palace Thief” continues, groups examine how the results of the first "Mr. Julius Caesar" competition influenced the development of the characters in...

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3, lines 139-170, is the focus of this day's lesson plan. Readers examine the dramatic irony in Juliet's comments and consider how "lamentable chance" caused by a "greater power" plays a role in the tragedy.

West of the West's documentary Arlington Springs Man introduces viewers to the remarkable finds on Santa Rosa Island. Archaeologist have discovered on this small island that is part of the Channel island chain, human and pygmy mammoth...

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...

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...

What exactly is consciousness? Readers look at paragraph three of the chapter "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" and discuss how Du Bois introduces the ideas of double consciousness and true self-consciousness. Scholars track the development...

Scholars, high schoolers, class members! With the help of this lesson, you too can identify the three persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) the characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar used to convince...

Readers of The Call of the Wild engage in a four- corners activity that fosters discussion and encourages readers to make connections between their lives and the text. Individuals respond to a series of discussion prompts and justify...

What does it mean to say that a right is unalienable? How did the founding fathers convey this revolutionary concept in the Declaration of Independence? Engage in a close reading and analysis of the Declaration of Independence, and...

Teach your class about Helen Keller and her accomplishments with a reading comprehension activity based on A Picture Book of Helen Keller by David A. Adler. As individuals read, they answer discussion questions about Helen...

Readers of The Autobiography of Malcolm X continue their analysis of the methods Haley uses to show how Malcolm X is changing due to his exposure to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.

Writers use class time to develop the draft of their personal narratives, drawing on techniques Haley uses in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Connect with the text using helpful annotation strategies. As your class reads the first section of Karen Russell's short story, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," they note important passages that establish character...

Nothing makes junior high and high school teachers more frustrated than plagiarism. Instruct young writers about copyright laws and the correct ways to paragraph information without copying the exact words. A set of secondary-level...

Class members discover what it means to publish their works. Working on a computer, young writers use an online dictionary to edit their spellings and conventions based on the information added to the rubric. From here, and most of the...

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club brings together the central ideas of identity, ambition, expectations, and relationships. As high schoolers read an excerpt from the chapter "Two Kinds," they note how Jing-Mei's connection to music relates to...

Track character development with an excerpt from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. As tenth graders examine the relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother, they compare both characters' expectations of each other in the chapter "Two Kinds."

Class members continue their analysis of Letters to a Young Poet, paying particular attention to how Rilke uses metaphor to develop his ideas about the source of inspiration.

Readers of "The Palace Thief" focus on how the author's descriptions and word choices reveal the characters of the narrator, Sedgewick, and the senator.

As the class concludes its close reading of “The Palace Thief,” groups consider how the narrator's character has changed throughout Ethan Canin’s short story.

Is history "little more than a relic," as one of the characters in "The Palace Thief" contends? Has Hundert's love of antiquity kept him from changing with the times? Readers consider how the author uses these conflicting views to...