Have everything you need to know about the elements of poetry with a nine-page handout. Split into four categories—word sounds, meanings, arrangement, and imagery—budding poets may reference terms, read definitions, descriptions, and...

Where have all the activists gone? Class members compare 21st-century activism with the suffrage movement and the work of Susan B. Anthony. They begin by examining Anthony's biography and speeches to find evidence that her words and...

An excerpt from Henry MacNeal Turner's address to the Georgia legislature provides class members with an opportunity to develop their literary analysis skills. Prompted by the provided factual, evaluative, and interpretive questions,...

Choose your words carefully. Martin Luther King Jr. carefully chooses his words to provide evidence to support his claim about segregation. Scholars work in pairs to discuss previous lessons, complete homework assignments, determine the...

Take your place in the world—or the text. Scholars look at how the placement of a particular paragraph adds to the meaning of "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. Before working on a quick write activity; readers...

What makes you want to buy that new car? Or vote for that popular politician? Study the persuasive techniques commonly found in advertisements or argumentative writing, including repetition, exaggeration, and fact vs. opinion.

President Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech, delivered on June 12, 1987 before the Berlin Wall, provides class members with an opportunity to examine three key aspects of informational text: author bias, the use of facts and...

To conclude a study of A Raisin in the Sun and to prepare for a visit to the Lewis Museum, class members analyze Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem." Learners then draw connections to characters in the play and to their own experiences...

Timing is everything. Introduce young historians to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" with a resource that underscores the significance of the timing of the Good Friday Birmingham march, King's subsequent...

A primary source set of photographs, videos, newspaper articles, and FBI reports provides insight into race relations during the 1960s, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, and the murder of Emmitt Till. Designed to be used to...

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their eyes Were Watching God has been highly praised and severely criticized for its depiction of African American folk culture. A set of primary source materials, including photographs, articles, essays, and...

A Tale of Two Cities is the core text for five lessons in a Curriculum Guide for Charles Dickens' famous novel. To begin, scholars examine Dickens' use of anaphora in the first line of the novel. Next, they compare the point of view in a...

After listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech, young historians research information about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, possible motives for the attack, and the consequences of the attack. Scholars...

As part of a study of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, young historians imagine the feelings of those who lived during the attack by creating a word cloud of 10 words they think express the emotions of people at that time....

Young historians use the prompts on a worksheet to analyze President Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech. They identify the intended audience for the speech, the devices FDR used to persuade his audience, the responses promoted, and the...

Challenges to voting rights is not a new thing. Using President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 "The American Promise" speech on voting rights as a starting point, young historians research current voting rights laws and challenges.

Complex, disturbing, and challenging, Beloved is the focus of a lesson that provides three activities to guide a close reading of Toni Morrison's novel. Readers create chapter titles based on key plot elements or themes,...

To conclude a study of One Hundred Years of Solitude, class members analyze Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech. After a whole-class discussion of the main ideas in the speech, individuals draft a...

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb," featured at the 2021 inauguration of President Joseph Biden, is the focus of a six-page guide. The guide includes before reading, during reading, and after reading...

Ethics, emotion, reason—scholars investigate advertisers' persuasive techniques to attract buyers. After examining the techniques used in infomercials, writers craft a persuasive essay on a topic of their choice.

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...

Young orators demonstrate what they have learned about persuasion and persuasive devices throughout the unit by analyzing a persuasive speech and then crafting their persuasive essays. Class members engage in a role-play exercise, use...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech provides the text for a lesson plan that introduces scholars to the significance of syntax. After examining several types of clauses, phrases, and structures, class members use the...

Young historians watch a video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech and answer questions that test their knowledge of the event. After discussing the fact sheet, they reread the speech, select a phrase or...