Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 2
Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...
K20 LEARN
Voices from the Past: History and Literature
Art can enhance the understanding of history. That's the big idea in a lesson that has young scholars read Randall Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and an excerpt from John Hersey's Hiroshima, which provide a...
K20 LEARN
The New Colossus: Determining Author's Perspective
Introduce young scholars to the concept of the author's perspective with a lesson that uses Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," as the anchor text. Groups use a T-chart to identify words that reveal the author's point of view of The...
EngageNY
Considering a Character’s Relationship with Others: Contrasting Ha and Her Brothers
Who is Ha? Scholars look closely at the poem Papaya Tree and carefully examine the character Ha. Learners work in groups to create an anchor chart defining Ha's character. They also answer text-dependent questions to help with...
Curated OER
Effective Literary Analyses
Twelfth graders discuss a fictional text that they are given, they identify passages, which highlight the author's style, language naances and textual ambiguities. Pupils brainstorm possible topics for an analytical essay, they are...
Curated OER
Poetry
Fifth graders preview different poetry selections form different poets to narrow their criteria for a favorite poem. They use the web and written sources to find a favorite poem and then give an oral interpretation of their poem in class...
Curated OER
Focus on Figurative Language in Prose and Poetry
Young scholars place emphasis on the use of figurative language when analyzing prose and poetry. In this figurative language lesson, students explore the tone of a story and its imagery. Young scholars read and discuss how the author...
Digital Public Library of America
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
A set of 14 primary sources provides background for a study of Lorraine Hansberry's drama, A Raisin in the Sun. Featured are images from stage productions of the play, white supremacy protests, a clip from a television interview, and...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 8
You can often track a character's development based on others' reactions to their words or actions. Using Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," ninth graders work in a jigsaw activity to analyze how Mirabella's...
Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Annotate and Analyze a Paired Passage: Practice 1 (English II Reading)
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...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Close Reading in the Classroom
Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...
Curated OER
Analyzing Literary Devices
Eighth graders identify figurative language and poetry in this literary analysis lesson. Using Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and a YouTube video for "The Walrus and the Carpenter," young readers complete a literary device...
Louisiana Department of Education
Essential Elements Cards
Use essential elements cards to help lesson plan! Each card contains an informational text common core standard for grade levels six through eight and suggestions for activities and supports. Cards address skills such as citing textual...
Curated OER
Hearing the Poetry of Langston Hughes Through the Sounds of Jazz
Students have an appreciation of Langston Hughe's poetry and his use of jazz rhythms, have the ability to read poetry closely, and freewrite to gain a fresh perspective on music and literature.
Curated OER
Focus on Figurative Language
Using the poems "First Snow" by Ted Kooser and "Eating Alone" by Yi-Young Lee (or other suggested poems by Robert Frost or Sara Teasdale), middle schoolers search for examples of figurative language. Guide your learners by discussing...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 9: Climax
Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - My Last Dutchess
Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be instructional activityed by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic...
Curated OER
Make Way for Ducklings
First graders use skills to collect, organize, and interpret data. They compare and contrast two stories, Make Way for Ducklings and Chibi: A True Story From Japan. Students create a duckling.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises
Dr. Seuss in the Classroom
Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 19: Synthesis
Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 5
Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event
Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme
Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...