Students investigate Native American culture reading and writing about early Native American authors. They listen to an expert to extend their understanding of the culture.

Students examine the specific form and function of tall tales and toasts. They discover the importance of performance in the telling of a story and the importance of rhythm in the telling of toasts. They create stories of their own, in...

Eighth graders are introduced to Chinese language and culture to make Asian reading selections in literature circles more meaningful. They write about Chinese characters, work on oral speaking, and read Asian books and then have...

Accompany a reading of First Come the Zebra written and illustrated by Lynne Barasch with a teacher's guide equipped with before reading, vocabulary, and after reading activities. Additional social studies,...

Need an extra challenge for your best readers? Check out a unit that uses Hannah Webster Foster’s epistolary novel, The Coquette, published in 1797, as the anchor text. The resource is packed with project ideas; each with its...

A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to...

Sherman Alexie's coming-of-age social commentary is the focus of a review worksheet. Learners use clues from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to complete a crossword puzzle about the novel.

With this New York Times "Learning Network" exercise, high schoolers read an article about the death of Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are and then respond to several prompts that require them to shape their own opinions...

Accompany the African folktale, Anansi the Spider, with a collection of five lessons, each equipped with supplemental activities. Lessons offer multidisciplinary reinforcement in English language arts, social studies, science,...

Compare and contrast folktales, myths, and fables in an interactive eBook. The interactive is broken up into three topics: myths, fables, and folktales. Each section includes a reading passage and a guided lesson on the theme, topic, and...

Students explore the use of voice and title in William Faulkner's, "As I Lay Dying". They identify and discuss the use of image, symbols and narrative voice in the story.

Cultivate young performers while teaching them about helping one another with this interactive storytelling lesson. Elementary schoolers read or listen to the story The Little Red Hen by Mike Lockett and then act out the story while...

A Reading Adventure Pack features a fiction and nonfiction text—The Oxcart Man by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney and Farming by Gail Gibbons. Following the readings, scholars make a collage showcasing foods farmed from...

Three creative activities follow reading a fiction and nonfiction book about heroes. Scholars build hero action figures out of clay for make-believe play, explain in written form how they show bravery, kindness, patience, thoughtfulness,...

Students examine cultures, traditions, and feeling throughout cultures. For this cultural lesson, students use literature, maps, and cultural information to examine how people have universal feelings despite their different cultures and...

Introduce your class to the Greek alphabet and language. Examine how the Greek language influenced the English language. Study the history, timeline of achievements, and the role oral history played in Greece.

Connecting to literature and learning how to infer are two great reading strategies everyone needs to know. Here, the class will read along with the story The Miracle of the First Poinsettia, review folktales as a genre, and make...

Watching is not the same as seeing. Transform viewers from passive watchers to active students of film with this 34-page packet, filled with lessons and activities that use Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to examine the technology, the...

Students contrast the traditional Cinderella character with a modern, independent and socially conscious Cinderella. To activate prior knowledge by eliciting from the students some of the familiar story elements of the traditional...

Young scholars identify genres of literature. In this literature instructional activity, students read definitions of the various genres. Young scholars choose books and list clues in the texts that help them identify the appropriate genre.

Seventh graders identify the elements that characterize culture in literature. Students analyze the representation of Chinese minority peoples through textbooks. Students identify and interpret the differences among the people of China.

Third graders gain an appreciation for writing, analyzing, reading and listening to poetry, viewing poems as a motivation for studying Japanese culture and tradition. They study and create their own haiku and tanka poems with illustrations.