Heroes Past and Present

Young writers choose a person from American history, their community, or their family to use as the subject of a persuasive essay. The process begins with a discussion of the characteristics of a hero, the completion of a prewriting web,...

Viewers will love this engaging video, which is an adventure of its own! The narrator begins by relating the hero's journey to modern books, and then introduces Joseph Campbell and his thoughts about the process. As the narrator details...

What is the difference between Hercules and Spiderman? Both are heroes, right? Kids identify the characteristics that make a hero, and analyze the differences between heroes of long ago and today. They write creative stories describing a...

Why do we need heroes? Acquaint your class with the epic hero, tragic hero, and romantic hero. The narrator defines each type with accessible language and provides an example from literature. Learners will enjoy the narrator's style and...

To examine the “New English” Chinua Achebe uses in Things Fall Apart, readers complete a series of worksheets that ask them to examine similes, proverbs, and African folktales contained in the novel. Individuals explain the meaning...

Listen to a few sentences describing the actions of the person shown. The sentences are then written in the past-tense for you to see and identify the simple past-tense verbs. Regular and irregular verbs are then defined with sentences...

The antihero, the flawed protagonist of so much of contemporary literature such as Fahrenheit 451, is the subject of a short video that traces the fall from grace of the divine heroes of classical literature to the flawed, far more human...

You don't need a time machine to travel through time—you just need the English language! Explore the 12 possible ways to describe something that happened, something that is still happening, or something that will happen with an engaging...

Here is a language arts instructional activity that can be used with virtually any grade level. The only thing that changes is the reading level of the books. Learners compare and contrast different heroes and the characteristics they...

Introduce your class to epic heroes with these activities for Beowulf. After watching a video clip, taking notes on heroes, and tracking characteristics of heroism throughout Beowulf, class members retell an episode of Beowulf using a...