The Core Knowledge Foundation offers this teacher guide to Robert Louis Stevenson's gothic novel about the duality of humankind. The 128-page guide includes a unit introduction, unit calendar, nine scripted lesson plans, assessments with...

Massive storms, shipwrecks, survivors stranded on an island ruled by an aging magician, and strange creatures—Shakespeare's The Tempest appeals to today's middle schoolers. For this unit, seventh graders read selections from an...

"Who am I?" Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace," Julio Naboa Polanco's poem "Identity," and a clip from a Jason Bourne film provide learners with a context to consider the traits that makeup identity. Scholars create a...

The second interactive in a series of 10 introduces young scholars to character archetypes, archetypal plot patterns, and archetypal motifs, including the use of color. Learners read passages explaining the term and study examples from...

Finding the central idea in a text is equally important in fiction and nonfiction. Work on analyzing a piece of writing for the central idea with Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," complete with supporting...

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."

Prepare for a mid-unit assessment based on Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club with a brainstorming and discussion lesson plan. Focused on two chapters from the novel ("Rules of the Game" and "Two Kinds"), the lesson plan guides tenth graders...

Football fans and ready readers will enjoy a lesson plan based on H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. Focusing on chapter 4, the lesson plan encourages tenth graders to examine Mike's character development as it relates to the season...

The manipulation of time is one of the most essential elements in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. As your language arts class participates in a jigsaw discussion activity, they work together to analyze the play's plot structure and...

Was Oedipus' destiny determined by fate or by his actions? Using details from the text, ninth graders delve into a critical thinking exercise based on Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Now that Oedipus has learned his true identity, readers...

What might a papaya symbolize? Using the resource, scholars look for examples of symbolism in the novel Inside Out & Back Again. They also participate in a silent discussion called a Chalk Talk, writing their responses to a...

Check out the view! Scholars complete a graphic organizer to analyze how Laurence Yep develops a character's point of view in Dragonwings. Additionally, pupils re-read parts of the novel and annotate the text on sticky notes, looking for...

Get to the point ... the point of view, that is! Pupils analyze Laurence Yep's Dragonwings for tone, figurative language, and point of view by completing graphic organizers. Scholars also read an excerpt from the novel and record...

I am dancing to the music in my head. Scholars learn to listen for music in their heads as they read literature and poems. After they identify and analyze poetic devices that relate to music, they create their own musical poems.

Women gained the right to vote in the twentieth century, but the fight for equality dates back centuries. Using an invitation to an 1874 suffrage convention, eager historians consider the motivations behind supporters of the suffrage...

After a review of symbolism, class members use the provided worksheet to first list the objects they observe in Arnold Mesches' painting "Coney Island" and then suggest possible symbolic meanings for each of the objects. A second...

To prepare for crafting a descriptive poem about a character in F. Scot Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, groups describe the texture of objects hidden in small bags. Individuals then select a character from the novel and an object...

Take a look at foreshadowing in any text by recording instances of foreshadowing in a straightforward graphic organizer. Learners note down the event, the clue, and the page number for five foreshadowed events. There is also space for...

Discern the tone in four selected poems with a straightforward assignment. Junior high readers analyze the authors' word choice and text structure to define a tone for each poem, as well as each poem's meaning.

Class members have an opportunity to compare how a film and a play handle the same source material by viewing the opening chapters of George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope and acts I and II of Ian Doescher's play, William...

Scholars read an excerpt from the short story "The Bonfire" by Kunikida Doppo as well as a nonfiction passage about handcycling. Next, they answer comprehension-based multiple-choice questions. Additionally, they respond to short-answer...

How does Gabriel Garcia Marquez make the magical elements of his novel appear so real? That's the challenge facing readers of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Scholars examine the tone and descriptive details Garcia Marquez uses to...

Readers of "The Most Dangerous Game" must argue which of Richard Connell's characters is the protagonist or antagonist. The lesson begins with scholars reading selected passages from the story and making predictions about who they...

What do a colt and a boy in a tree have in common? More than might be first apparent. The fourth interactive in a series of ten introduces readers to intertextuality, the process of using abstract thinking to consider how one text...