The Art of Charity in Characterization

Explore with your class how Elizabeth Buhot develops the theme of alienation in the way she depicts the isolation of her characters in “A Start.” The richly detailed plan includes a reading check, discussion questions, vocabulary...

Introduce protagonists, antagonists, antiheros, and foils to your unit on Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying. After reading the first 13 chapters from the book, learners discuss Grant's behavior and reactions to different events,...

Continue your study of In the Time of the Butterflies with this second lesson in a series of ten. Pupils participate in an exploration of the setting Julia Alvarez creates, a discussion about truth and fiction and their reading from the...

It's a tale of life, retold by a genius, full of sound and fury. Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood takes center stage in a resource that spotlights how the director adapted the characters and themes in Shakespeare's Macbeth to Japanese...

Compare and contrast the characters in John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Using a Venn diagram, kids write in different traits to describe each person, and note their shared characteristics in the middle section.

Does identify come from within, or is it shaped by external forces? Explore the complex concept of identify with a two-unit module designed for 12th grade language arts. The first unit uses A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams...

How do writers use the interaction between elements like characterization and setting to create meaning? Readers of "A Worn Path" create a series of comic book-style graphics of Eudora Welty's short story and reflect on how Welty uses...

“There is nothing that becommeth a maid better than soberness, silence, shamefastness, and chastity, both of body & mind.” This line, from Thomas Bentley ‘s The Monument of Matrons published in 1582, typifies the way women were...

What do Robert Downey Jr., Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Fritz Weaver, Roger Moore, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Daffy Duck have in common? Why, it’s elementary, my dear Watson! They all have portrayed Sherlock Holmes. Literary detectives...

Seven major abstract art movements are analyzed by learners in groups. Each group analyzes various works by determining which work belongs to which movement. They then read Flatland, engage in an art and literary analysis discussion,...