ReadWriteThink
Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading
Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays" serves as the anchor text in a five-part lesson that takes the mystery out of poetry analysis by modeling explicit strategies for pupils to employ to conduct a close reading of a poem. After...
ReadWriteThink
Heroes Are Made of This: Studying the Character of Heroes
What makes heroes and villains? A six-part unit plan asks young scholars to explore the concept of heroism and the characteristics they consider heroic and unheroic. Groups create character maps that focus on how characters are shaped by...
PBS
Exploring the Drive to Create in Frankenstein
Is it hubris that drives the creative process? Is it the desire to be remembered long past death? An interactive asks readers of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and Percy Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" to consider what this wife and...
PBS
Exploring First-Person Narrative
If you really want to know, this is a terrific lesson all about narratives, which is just a fancy way of saying telling stories. And you get to do it without being phony or anything. My favorite part is that you get to read a passage...
PBS
Shifting Perspectives in Toni Morrison's Beloved
An interactive provides readers with an opportunity to record their reactions to Beloved, Toni Morrison's powerful narrative based on the life of Margaret Garner. Prompts ask them to consider how the shifting point of view contributes to...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 1: Unit 2, Lesson 1
How can an author's decisions impact a text? Using an insightful resource, scholars begin their study of Hamlet by reading Act 1.1. They explore the language, characters, and setting in small groups. Upon finishing group work, pupils...
Read Write Think
Book Report Alternative: Rewind the Plot!
Have you ever looked for a new way to teach an old concept? Scholars thinking about the rising action of a story in a whole new perspective. However, Book Report Alternative: Rewind the Plot! challenges readers and allows for much...
Institute for Humane Education
Not So Fair and Balanced: Analyzing Bias in the Media
Life is not always fair. Who's heard that before? This same concept moves to a larger scale using prejudice and bias. Pupils discuss where prejudice attitudes derive and how they develop throughout life. Reading comprehension...
ReadWriteThink
Designing Museum Exhibits for The Grapes of Wrath: A Multigenre Project
Challenge readers of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to create a museum exhibit that uses artifacts to focus on one issue raised by the award winning story of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the Joads.
Louisiana Department of Education
The Scarlet Letter
Use Nathanial Hawthorne's immortal text on the influence of religion on the early American settlements, as well as its continued impact on American culture, with a unit that focuses on The Scarlet Letter. In addition to Hawthorne's...
Curated OER
Constructing Narrative from the Migrant Experience in Literature
Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.
Curated OER
Vocabulary Comic Strips
Who says comic strips aren’t educational? Prove these naysayers wrong by asking your class members to create a comic strip for a selected vocabulary word. Using online technological tools that provide access to an array of options for...
Curated OER
Seeing Words in a New Way
What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Charles Baudelaire: Poète Maudit (The Cursed Poet)
After learning the main ideas of the Decadent movement, learners work in small groups to read and translate poems by the French poet Charles Baudelaire using basic etymology skills. They then read the accurate English translations to see...
Knowledge Share
Super Kids: Vocabulary Builder
Pick your grade level and learn a word a day to build your vocabulary. Includes PSAT and SAT Vocabulary Preparation. iPhone and iPad apps are available for a small fee.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Building a Better Vocabulary
This is an index of vocabulary-building information and quizzes, including a list of roots, prefixes, and suffixes with their meanings. It offers 365 SAT and GRE level vocabulary words, definitions, and sample sentences. The quizzes...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Using Sentence Structure (Part of Speech)
This slideshow lesson focuses on using sentence structure and parts of speech to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. It explains how to look for parentheses or commas after unfamiliar words to help determine meaning; it also shows...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Vocab Tip: Create a Sentence
This video lesson provides a tip to learn new vocabulary. Look up the word in online dictionary, and then create a short sentence using the word including context clues and a familiar topic. Real Player is required.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Vocab Tip: Say It Out Loud
This video lesson offers a tip for learning new vocabulary words by saying the word and its definition aloud. This stimulates the brain and activates prior knowledge which helps you remember the word. It also covers what to do if you...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Vocabulary Words
This lesson focuses on the need to look up vocabulary words when given a list from an assigned reading to help better understand the text. It offers a literary example of such a list. This information is provided in text and in audio...
Other
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Dictionaries Online
Search this online dictionary which includes the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, American English, Dictionary of Idioms, and Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and English/Spanish translations. L.9-10.4c References, L.11-12.4c...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Using Context Clues (English Iii Reading)
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] This lesson focuses on ways of searching through the context for clues to illuminate unknown words. Unknown words interrupt the flow of your reading, and, like a bump in the...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Reference Materials Printed and Electronic
Learn how to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauri in order to determine meanings of words and phrases, including their denotations, connotations, and etymologies.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Cognates (English I Reading)
This lesson focuses on cognates, words from different languages that have similar spellings, pronunciations, and meanings. It shows ways that people who are in foreign countries can function by finding similar signs and words.