Curated OER
Honoring Our Pets During National Pet Week
Recognize National Pet Week with reading and writing activities to celebrate the animals in your pupils' lives.
Pasco Middle School
AVID Socratic Seminar
Developed specifically for AVID students, this packet of materials that includes an explanation of the Socratic seminar, the preparation materials, and tips and protocols, is a must-have resource for any class.
Curated OER
The Scarlet Letter and Transcendentalism
Enhance your unit on The Scarlet Letter with a thorough and applicable lesson. Learners use the anchor text in this unit plan that asks them to consider the Transcendental concepts intertwined within Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale.
Curated OER
Introducing Jane Eyre: An Unlikely Victorian Heroine
High schoolers investigate the expectations and limitations placed on Victorian women and evaluate Charlotte Bronte's position and desire for literary achievement in using the male pseudonym, Currer Bell.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: Burying Addie's Voice
Learners explore the use of voice and title in William Faulkner's, "As I Lay Dying". They identify and discuss the use of image, symbols and narrative voice in the story.
Annenberg Foundation
Gothic Undercurrents
Terror, mystery, excitement. American writers of the 19th century, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, used these elements to create morally ambiguous tales that challenged the prevailing belief in...
Curated OER
Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia
Included in this resource are a variety of activities to do while reading Willa Cather's My Antonia. The activities, which range from mapping out Nebraska to writing activities about pioneer living, are all designed with one guiding...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Animal Farm: Allegory and the Art of Persuasion
Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms and the...
National Endowment for the Humanities
A Wrinkle in Time: The Board Game
Tackle some big questions about A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle with a board game project. As learners brainstorm for and complete their board games, they consider what helps and hinders Meg on her journey and why she succeeds in...
Carnegie Library
Creative Writing: Middle School Lesson Plan
Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers.
Curated OER
Jazz in America Lesson Plan 2
Young scholars explore jazz's primary elements. They identify the basic definitions of terms associated with jazz. In addition, they listen to Song for My Father.
Curated OER
Poetry Project
Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...
Curated OER
Understanding Core Values Using the Frayer Model
Students complete the Frayer Model. In this literature lesson, students review the concept of theme in literature. Students identify major themes in books they've read. Students learn the attributes of the Frayer Model and then complete...
Curated OER
Character Impressions
Whether you are planning a unit on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, or simply want to improve your pupils' descriptive writing, this lesson could be a good addition to your class. Using the Six-Trait Writing process, pupils use...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - The Ruin
Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading
Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Character in Place: Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” for the Common Core
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...
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Identity Lesson 1: Close Reading/Socratic Seminar
John Knowles' A Separate Peace provides readers with an opportunity to develop their close reading and analytical skills as they look for what Knowles feels are the factors that shape our identity.
Curated OER
Yellow Bird and Me
Upper elementary artists create works which demonstrate an understanding of the many elements of theater and the visual arts. This four-day plan combines many wonderful aspects of visual, musical, and theatrical arts into one very...
Curated OER
Pros and Cons: A Childcare Debate
Students research prevailing attitudes and Rousseau's position on child rearing in the 18th century. They consider attitudes toward motherhood and childcare in our own culture through interviews with peers and family members.
Curated OER
Jazz In America
Students gain a fundamental understanding of the role of jazz in the Harlem Renaissance. They explain its historical significance and cultural implications.
Curated OER
Jazz in America Lesson Plan 7
Students survey free jazz and fusion. They explore how free jazz and fusion reflected American culture and society in the 1960s and 1970s.
Curated OER
Slavery's Opponents and Defenders
Students explore the wide-ranging debate over American slavery and the lives of its leading opponents and defenders and the views they held about America's "peculiar institution."
Curated OER
Fate vs. Mind: A Macedonian Folk Tale
Students read examples of folk tales and describe the characteristics of fables and folk tales. They also examine the concept of fate and if it plays a part in people's lives.