Walden Woods Project
19th Century Lessons for 21st Century Lives
The words of Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience seem particularly relevant today, as are his writings and those of other transcendental thinkers who ask what it mean to live deliberately and what are the responsibilities of...
Curated OER
Winter Wonderland: Internet Literature Project
Students, using the Internet, communicate with peers around the world about winter-themed books. They study authors, write book reviews, re-write endings, interview book characters, create scene dioramas, paint murals, and write...
Curated OER
Buoyancy: Integrating Science and Literature
Integrate science and literature by using the scientific method to test the veracity of the floating peach described in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. Clips from a Bill Nye: The Science Guy episode about buoyancy frontload...
Curated OER
Opening Doors to Social Studies with Children's Literature: The Desert Alphabet Book
Pupils explore the geography of the United States. In this social studies lesson, students identify the major deserts on a map of the United States.
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: What Is Happiness?
Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 3
Just like in real life, characters in short stories show their true personalities through their words and deeds. Decipher the character development in Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with a set of activities...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Utopia/Dystopia: The American Dream
America was founded by dreamers, and the American dream still resonates in our country today. Track the American dream from its Puritan beginnings to its optimistic descendants with a instructional activity that focuses on speeches by...
Curated OER
Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi: Mixing Words and Pictures
Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy lesson plan focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then discusses how...
Louisiana Department of Education
Unit: Hamlet
Encourage readers to determine if Hamlet's madness is actually divinest sense. Class members analyze the words of the play before studying related texts, including T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," scenes from...
Louisiana Department of Education
Hatchet
Accompany a novel study of Hatchet by Gary Paulson with a unit consisting of 16 lessons focused on physical and emotional survival. Reading the story along with a variety of informational texts, scholars compare and contrast reading...
Curated OER
Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems
Poems carved into the wooden walls of the Asian immigrant prisons on Angel Island provide upper elementary graders an opportunity to study not only the story behind the poems but to also focus on the figurative language employed by the...
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...
Curated OER
Flying Freudian Fun: A Look At Ethical Decision Making
There are not many more apt examples of ethics gone awry than William Golding's Lord of the Flies.. Ninth graders focus the ethics of decision making with the examples provided in the plot. They focus on the concept of the psyche and how...
Japan Society
The “I” Novels in the Context of Early 20th-Century Japan
Although this lesson plan covers the rather obscure topic of the Japanese "I-novel", it also includes a great deal of historical information and material for an in-depth discussion of universal literary concepts. Specifically, young...
Roseburg Public Schools
Library Skills and Literature
The library is such a valuable resource for kids of all ages. Help elementary readers learn all about parts of the library, text features for both fiction and nonfiction text, and different ways to find books that they want to read.
Curated OER
Puerto Rico . . . Its Land, History, Culture, and Literature
Students examine Puerto Rico's location and from its geographic location, reflect on its culture and people. They also read a play by a Puerto Rican author. This is an excellent cross-curricular unit, including history, geography, and...
Core Knowledge Foundation
Plants Tell It Again!™ Read-Aloud Anthology
A 190-page anthology explores the life and parts of plants, flowers, and trees while boosting reading comprehension skills. Literature and informational texts showcase Johnny Appleseed and George Washington Carver. Lessons follow the...
Roald Dahl
The BFG Lesson Plans
A 55-page unit examines the novel, The BFG, by Roald Dahl. Six lessons pay close attention to friendship, dreams, and believing themes while analyzing interesting characters, writing creative vocabulary, smilies, metaphors, an exciting...
McGraw Hill
Reading Strategies and Literary Elements
Introduce your freshmen to reading comprehension strategies and key literary elements with a year's worth of lessons and exercises. Each lesson focuses on a specific literary device and includes a definition of the term, a passage that...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
I Need a Superhero
Once the class learns about the hero's journey, they'll find it in every story and movie they see! Take characters from their humble beginnings to their atonement and apotheosis with a set of lessons about the hero's journey focusing...
University of Kansas
Feelings - Thematic Unit
Boost language skills with a unit all about feelings. Scholars from all grade levels take part in several lessons that incorporate specific vocabulary terms and adjectives while discussing their feelings with their peers. Reading...
Curated OER
Exploring Themes in Literature: The Oral Tradition
Are you are considering a unit on Beowulf or Superman, on myths, or tricksters? Here's a great overview you can use to launch a study of universal themes and archetypes. The focus here is on the oral tradition, but the concepts apply to...
Curated OER
Book Illustrations and Their Illustrators as Artists-K-3
Help learners construct relationships between written narratives and book illustrations, and between the narratives in formal visual art and the subject of the visual art. Look at Caldecott winning books and focus on the pictures drawn....
Curated OER
American Literature Unit Two
Middle schoolers prepare for and respond to literature selections. This package includes nineteen lessons from the American Literature, A New Nation: 1750-1850 series, each covering a different reading selection. Pre-reading and response...