Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...

As your authors prepare to write a hypothetical novel, they need all the inspiration they can find! Using a book they have already read (and enjoyed), learners complete a literary analysis by filling in eight short-answer...

Feeling the pressure to confirm is something any adolescent can relate to. Explore an essential theme with a response to literature assessment that prompts learners to identify main ideas with evidence and supporting details.

What would it be like to sell your eggs to a couple who can't have children on their own? Could you even imagine it? As most of us have never been in this position, this descriptive essay is really quite interesting. The reading itself...

Introduce your class to the personal essay with this worksheet. Learners identify the subject of an essay and then record examples from the essay that represent the author's thoughts and feelings regarding the subject. While this...

A three-part assessment promotes reading comprehension skills. Class members read literary texts and take notes to discuss their findings, answer comprehension questions, write summaries, and complete charts. 

Encourage scholars to share their love of reading with informative and engaging book reviews. Here, you'll find a series of guides that walk learners through the review writing process. Included in the collection is information about...

Have you ever cheated on a test? What about copied someone else's homework? After reading Colleen Wenke's essay "Too Much Pressure," class members use the provided reading comprehension questions to focus their analysis of important...

Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis worksheet. Here, scholars follow steps and answer questions to dissect any poem. Topics include the poem's meaning, theme, technique, and structure, as well as personal...

Does pride really goeth before the fall, or can it be essential to one's development? Second graders read two of Aesop's fables that refer to pride in their morals, and write a short essay about whether pride is good or bad, based on...

Practice literary analysis with your poetry pupils using the mysterious narrative poem "The Listeners." They examine the archaic language and answer 12 comprehension and analysis prompts. Foster creativity with these referential...

Rudyard Kipling's advice to his son in the poem "If" is a resounding message that echoes through generations. After reading the famous poem, middle schoolers work on analyzing specific lines, completing activities based on...

Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...

Whether you are planning on using Of Mice and Men for whole-class reading or as a selection for literature circles; whether you are new to John Steinbeck's novel, or it has long been a part of your curriculum, you...

Powerful orators make their messages compelling with a combination of factors. Learn how to be an inspirational speaker with a reading assessment activity that presents a list of persuasive speaking techniques, as well as two...

Enhance your lesson on Shakespeare with this poetry activity. After reading lines 139-167 from As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 (provided on the first page), middle schoolers work on a graphic organizer to paraphrase each...

Introduce literary analysis, writing skills, and purposeful reading with a book review. Pupils answer five questions that ask about plot, characters, language used, story elements, and the main character. This is a wonderful way to start...

How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...

As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Learning more about Holden Caulfield's worldview and state of mind is an integral part of understanding J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. A thorough packet of materials pertaining to the unit allow learners to build prior...

Test understanding of "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namoika with an assessment that includes true/false, multiple choice, vocabulary, short answer, and essay questions. The test is not entirely traditional since, for the first 10...

The name itself may have your scholars' heads spinning: Eyjafjallajökull. Its recent volcanic eruption spurred many political cartoons on unrelated topics- using an analysis handout scholars examine the use of metaphor in 2 cartoons...

Track the progress of your fourth graders' reading and writing skills with this practice Common Core assessment. Based on a collection of six reading passages that include narrative stories, poetry, and a series of...