A View of Yourself Through Famous Writers

Passages from Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Ayn Rand's Anthem, Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game provide class members with an opportunity to examine how an author's choice of...

Point of view is the focus of the third lesson in a ten-lesson unit on The Grapes of Wrath. After a review of the third-person limited omniscient voice, the class looks at the way Steinbeck alternates specific chapters about the Joads...

Developing an awareness of and a respect for opposing views is a challenge all persuasive writers face. Model for your writers how to respectfully acknowledge opposing viewpoints and how to express an alternate view. Several exercises...

Get your writers composing their own short stories by following some or all of the ideas included here. You'll find short lessons and activities, handouts and assignment pages, sample paragraphs and sentences, and all sorts of great...

Explore historical portraits through art, world history, and drama. Budding thespians view websites featuring historical portraits, then choose a person of interest to research. They role play the part of this historical figure and...

Develop an understanding of main ideas and thesis statements with your class by using this step-by-step presentation. The concepts presented will guide learners through essay focus, main idea, central points, coherency, and proper...

Knock, knock, knock...Creep out your class with a critical thinking instructional activity focused on word relationships in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." They investigate  the relationship between word choice, mood, and...

Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this instructional activity prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct...

What has copyright law have to do with the Dracula, the most famous vampire in history? Check out the twisted tale of how a fight over the royalty rights to Bram Stoker's novel gave immortality to the blood sucker.

Twelfth graders read the short story The Lesson. They research the socio-economic and cultural context of the story and author. They examine the author's point of view. They analyze the first person narration in the story. They rewrite...