Make the Connection

How does the cultural context of Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, connect to the context of William Bulter Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming" from which Achebe drew his title? Class members use the Syncon (synergistic convergence)...

What cultural concepts must readers understand in order to connect to Things Fall Apart? As part of their study of Chinua Achebe’s novel, class members research Nigeria and the Igbo culture to create a collaborative, web-based, annotated...

A story about feral girls raised by werewolves is sure to have some interesting character development! Track the ways the girls and their teachers act, speak, and change with a lesson focused on Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls...

What happens when a tenuous grasp on sanity begins to slip? Compare Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain" with a lesson focused on the development of a common central idea. High...

Delve into the heart of dramatic dialogue with a unit focused on Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Having completed an online exploration about ancient Greece beforehand, ninth graders read the opening lines of the play and analyze how...

Oedipus' lack of literal and figurative vision does not mean he cannot see his own guilt in the terrible fates of Laius, Jocasta, and all the lives touched by prophecy. Conclude a literary analysis unit on Sophocles' Oedipus the King...

Having preparing for an analysis essay about one of the characters from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tenth graders demonstrate their understanding in a mid-unit assessment. They focus on either Jing-Mei or Waverly in an informative...

Introduce expository writing with a unit that asks writers to craft an essay to explain a belief, value, or priority that is important to them. Mini-lessons within the unit focus on crafting thesis statements and conclusions, selecting...

Ninth graders demonstrate their understanding of a central idea in Oedipus the King with a mid-unit writing assessment. Writers formulate a claim about the connection between prophecy and Oedipus's actions, and using evidence gathered...

Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...