Grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies are all part of the journey toward understanding a text. The last in a series of three extra support lessons designed to accompany Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails provides a wealth of...

A 15-page packet details three activities designed to engage scholars in Homer's The Odyssey. As they read, pupils use a graphic organizer to record examples of several literary terms found in The Odyssey and contemporary...

Challenge young scholars with a counting-themed series of activities. Your counters will write invitations to a feast, create books about dinner parties and animals, design posters, draw pictures of their favorite peaceful places,...

Readers take part in three activities after reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. To understand the importance of diction, class members analyze Stevenson's characters' language to denote their social status. After...

A 10-lesson unit takes high schoolers through a novel study of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. To start, students learn about Fitzgerald's background and gain historical context that prepares them for a reading of the book. The...

A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....

Students develop an appreciation for Shakespeare by researching the Elizabethan period and situations in the Twelfth Night. In this Shakespeare play lesson, students complete a 52 page packet to learn about the period of time and...

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...

Students explore the the legends and myths of the Orient, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas in this six lessons unit. Different cultures and belief systems of the inhabitants of these areas are examined through storytelling techniques.

Students use the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" to identify and analyze drama vocabulary, literary terms and elements of fiction. They write an original version of scenes from the play and develop a character analysis for the lead.

Students develop a sense of historical empathy as they discuss The Holocaust and roll play activities designed to highlight prejudice in today's society.  In this Holocaust history and The Diary of Anne Frank lesson, students...

These animated shorts introduce or review literary elements and techniques like theme, setting, figurative language, characterization, and conflict. They can be used when students are just learning how to identify the most commonly used...

In this lesson, students will review two elements of fiction, setting and plot, and learn how the setting influences the plot in stories.

This is an online study guide for The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien including author information, literary elements, chapter-by-chapter summaries/notes, study questions, and analysis.

A learning module that includes ten links to videos, websites, and assessments that review literary terms such as poetic devices, figurative language, literary elements, literary terms, and more.

This blendspace includes thirty-two spaces with content connected to Lois Lowry's dystopia novel, The Giver. Links include novel discussion questions, author interviews, and video tutorials to review literary topics.

This site features questions for each of the chapters in Robert Newton Peck's "A Day No Pigs Would Die."