Whether it's dark, delightful, or somber, set the mood with William Golding's Lord of the Flies. High-schoolers practice descriptive writing by creating the appropriate mood for an original scene, starring one of the book's main...

Can colors help to convey a mood in writing? Explore this question with your class using the songs "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band and "Blu is a Mood" by Blu Cantrell. After analyzing the effect of the color words in these songs...

Knock, knock, knock...Creep out your class with a critical thinking lesson focused on word relationships in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." They investigate  the relationship between word choice, mood, and interpretation of...

Students write a scene.  In this creative writing lesson, students read The Lightning Thief and discuss the sentence fluency and word choice in the writing.  Students complete a writing assignment where they create an...

Tone and Mood are not synonymous! Introduce young readers to these literary devices with a series of exercises that not only point out the significant differences between the terms but also shows them how to identify both the tone and...

Grading essays after reading a novel written by a lyrical master (think Nabokov, Morrison, Chabon) is a deflating experience. Why can’t your student’s display the same skill in diction as your favorite writers? Because you did not use...

Students explore the life of Harriet Tubman. They examine a painting of Harriet Tubman and consider the tools used to communicate information about her. Sudents describe how the color of a painting explains the mood of the illustrator....

Using Alpha Smarts, 3rd graders write a "Story-in-the-Round". The end result of this project is one story for every student in the class that has been written by the entire class. Students create a PowerPoint presentation with a...

Coke or Pepsi? Is it the taste or the advertising that determines preference? As part of a study of diction, class members examine two passages, one formal and one informal, about Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In addition, they consider word...

Third graders chunk text while reading it. In this language arts lesson, 3rd graders determine the author's purpose for calling certain things the names they are called like spuds for potatoes. Students discuss how words affect the...

Students use newspapers or magazines to create an acrostic poem where words are divided into parts of speech.

A band of brothers or the Devil's agents? Nobel warriors freeing the oppressed or mercenaries working for the military/industrial complex? Groups examine poems from the Civil War, World War I, and World War II to determine the poets'...

Take writing prompts to another level in this activity, which allows pupils to create scenes of dialogue based on the 1903 silent film, The Great Train Robbery. Useful for a language arts/history cross-curricular activity, the lesson...

Students reflect and explore their feelings and reactions to a segregation experiment through poetry. They discuss acceptable behavior during the experiment and the next day write journal entries reflecting their experiences.

Feeling high is not the only side effect of abusing prescription opioids. Middle and high schoolers learn more about specific painkillers, including Fentanyl, Oxycodone, and Clonazepam, as well as their common brand names and extensive...

Young scholars read and analyze the story. In this language arts lesson, students read Come on, Rain! and examine how mood and tone are created, the use of figurative language and the characteristics of the genre. Young scholars...

Students interpret what a similies and metaphors are. They give examples of similies and metaphors. Pupils write different similies and metaphors using fall or autumn descriptive words. Students base their comparisons on facts, once they...

Students listen to several examples of Haiku poetry and discuss the strict format. Then students create and edit their own Haiku poems and enhance them with ink designs.

Third graders illustrate a favorite poem with images, title, author's name and words of the poem on a clay pot.

Explore fantasy as a genre. After working in small groups to identify literary elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, class members share their work and then use the presentations to help them prepare to write...

Students watch the movie Jane Eyre and complete a viewing log. They take a test on their findings.

Students read and analyze several highly symbolic poems. They create their own symbolic poem, read it to the class, and discuss whether they can guess any hidden meanings.

Third graders analyze comics found in the newspaper for samples of logical, emotional, and ethical appeal. They write a paragraph for each selected comic strip explaining how the comic strip represents the use of logic, emotions, or ethics.

Third graders study Jacob Have I Loved.