University of Virginia
Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Text
Harriet Beecher Stowe's groundbreaking work Uncle Tom's Cabin is both historically and literarily relevant today. Read the entire text in an easily navigated site that allows learners to select their chapters and easily move to the...
Curated OER
Pride and Prejudice: Biopoem
Describe yourself or a character from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with a biopoem activity. Using the provided format, kids write their own characteristics or the character traits from the novel to create a poetic portrait.
Curated OER
Tuck Everlasting Unit
Natalie Babbitt's award winning fantasy, Tuck Everlasting, is the anchor text in a unit plan that focuses on identifying similes, metaphors, imagery, and personification in the text and analyzing how these elements effect the...
Alabama Learning Exchange
A Novel Study Unit to Take Us Back in Time
A Novel Study is the focus of this Literature PowerPoint. A class is about to have author Chris Paul come speak to their class about his novel, The Watson's Go to Birmingham - 1963. Before his appearance, the class is directed to do an...
Curated OER
Genre Lesson: Historical Fiction
Take a trip through history with a lesson on historical fiction. With instructions for games, reading activities, and literary analysis assignments, this resource would be a great addition to any reading unit with a historical fiction...
Curated OER
Monster: Guilty or Not Guilty
Is Steve Harmon innocent or guilty? Examine the evidence with a worksheet based on Monster by Walter Dean Myers. As kids read the book, they note particular passages that they believe indicate whether or not Steve committed the crime.
Curated OER
Unit Plan for The Catcher in the Rye —A “Place-Based” Approach
"People never notice anything." As part of their study of The Catcher in the Rye, class members adopt Holden Caulfield's approach and spend time as quiet observers of their surrounding, recording their observations/reflections in a...
Curated OER
Tunes for Bears to Dance to: Vocabulary Strategy
To prepare for a reading of Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, kids research vocabulary drawn from the novel and share their findings with their groups.
EngageNY
Building Background Knowledge: Why Do Workers Strike? (Chapter 11: "Los Aguacates/Avocados")
Make connections between Esperanza Rising and human rights with the activities outlined here. The instructional activity starts out with a brief quiz and review of the novel. After that, pupils circulate and share quote strips that you...
Curated OER
With Detective Fiction in the Urban Classroom
This abstract for an instructional unit using three-minute mysteries, stories by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe includes a short history of detective fiction, sample plans, and suggestions for exercises and activities...
Harper Collins
Parrot in the Oven: Response Journal
After completing Chapter 5 of Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, readers make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to Victor Martinez's novel by crafting journal entries addressing comments and questions to characters in...
EngageNY
Connecting Informational Text with Litearature: Building Background Knowledge About Mexican Immigration, California, and the Great Depression
Help your class transition as the setting in the novel Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, moves from Mexico to California. Beginning with prior knowledge, and moving into jigsaw research groups, class members add to and create posters...
Curated OER
Uglies: Problematic Situation
As part of a unit centered around a reading of Uglies, a 2005 young adult dystopian fiction novel by Scott Westerfield, Steven Cummings, and Devin K. Grayson, class members engage in an activity that asks groups to come to a...
Reed Novel Studies
Hatchet
A brief introductory presentation illustrates many images from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. From berries to black bears, young readers take a quick trip through Alaska during a class reading unit.
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 4: Literary Analysis
Does identity come from within, or do external forces shape it? Explore the complex identity concept with a two-unit module for 12th-grade language arts. The first unit uses A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and "A Daily Joy...
Novelinks
The Martian Chronicles: Fishbowl Discussion
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles provides the text for a fishbowl activity. Class members to sit in concentric circles, with the center circle discussing the topics from the book, and the outer circle observing the...
Planet e-Book
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
True passion can drive you mad. Stephen Dedalus, the main character in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man straddles many lines, including those between sanity and insanity, piety and sin, and individuality...
EngageNY
Gathering Evidence and Drafting a Two-Voice Poem (Chapter 13: "Los Duraznos/Peaches")
Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...
K12 Reader
Point of View: Who Is Telling the Story?
See how famous books of literature have different perspectives with a short worksheet. After reviewing the difference between first and third person points of view, learners look over six passages from various novels and decide...
EngageNY
Introducing Research Folders and Generating a Research Question
Take the next step in the writing process with a lesson plan geared towards the completion of writing an evidence-based essay about a rule to live by, as Bud did in Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Pupils collaborate with their...
K12 Reader
Narrator and Point of View
Point of view is important when choosing a narrator. Help young writers distinguish between first and third person point of view with an activity that features excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. After reading...
Literacy Design Collaborative
Exploring Character Development in The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
How did the Civil Rights Movement affect young people in the United States? Scholars read Christopher Paul Curtis' novel, The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963. Next, they write compare and contrast essays showing how the main...
Novelinks
The Hobbit: Problematic Situation
As part of a unit study of The Hobbit, class members engage in an activity that asks group to practice the skills needed to reach consensus in a discussion.
Curated OER
Timeline - United States and Germany, Before, During, and After World War II
Students read novel Rosa's Miracle Mouse, research assigned years in small groups, and create timelines and Powerpoint presentations detailing interaction between Germany and the United States before, during, and after World War II.