Curated OER
End-of-Year Practice Test (Grade 6 ELA/Literacy)
With the end of the year quickly approaching it's time to find out exactly how much your sixth graders have learned. Specifically designed for the Common Core ELA standards, this practice test gives students five reading passages,...
National Endowment for the Humanities
“The Great Migration” by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Minnie Bruce Pratt's poem, "The Great Migration," offers young scholars an opportunity to reflect on how where we come from influences who we are. Groups conduct a close reading of the poem, recording observations about the poem's...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2: Unit 1, Lesson 13
Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
The Revolutionary Times as Seen Through the Eyes of Women
The role of women before and during the American Revolution changed dramatically. To gain an understanding of these changes, middle schoolers analyze primary source documents, including letters from women that supported the patriot cause...
Trinity University Digital Commons
Romanticism: Past and Present
With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...
California Education Partners
The Road Not Taken
An effective lesson plan truly can make all the difference. Seventh graders read, analyze, and annotate Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" before writing an essay about what they believe to be the theme of the iconic poem.
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 6
Get ready for the big reveal! Scholars work in the final instructional activity of the unit to discuss the revelation in Browning's poem My Last Duchess. Pupils discuss homework in pairs before working in small groups to identify text...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2: Unit 1, Lesson 1
Once conceived, a guided set of literary analysis lessons will assist you day and night. Ninth graders look closely at "The Tell-Tale Heart" and analyze how Poe uses point of view to create questions about the narrator's sanity and...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Magical Musical Tour: Using Lyrics to Teach Literary Elements
Language arts learners don't need a lecture about poetry; they listen to poetry every day on the radio! Apply skills from literary analysis to famous songs and beautiful lyrics with a lesson about literary devices. As class...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Getting to the Core: Early American Poets
How do poets convey emotion and represent their views of life? Pupils learn more about Whitman and Dickinson through the unit and analyze their bold reinvention of craft and style for poets to come. Looking at classic pieces such as...
Curated OER
Louisiana's Tragic Hero - "Evangeline"
"Ye who believe...List to a Tale of Love in Acadie." Longfellow's epic poem, "Evangeline," launches a study of tragic heroines, epic poetry, the expulsion of the Acadians from Canada, and their subsequent migration to Louisiana. The...
Curated OER
Identifying Text Features of a Self-Written Fable
Make learning the parts of a book fun by having pupils construct their own glossary entries, table of contents, and title page. Beginning with a review of text features and a hunt for examples, kids use previously written fables to...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Fabulous Fibonacci and His Nifty Numbers
Fibonacci numbers are not only found in the classroom but also in nature. Explore the concept of Fibonacci numbers through a series of lessons designed to gain insight into the mathematical reasoning behind the number pattern, and spark...
New York State Education Department
English Language Arts Examination: August 2017
Reading and comprehending a poem is a lot different than doing the same for a piece of fiction or an informational text. As part of a sample English language arts examination, readers put their skills to the test by reading passages in...
Curated OER
Magnet Poetry
Students engage in a lesson that involves the use of imagery in poetry. They select words from poems that are used for imagery. The words are put onto magnets and then used to create new poems filled with imagery. The hands on connection...
Curated OER
Understanding Character
Readers practice character analysis by reviewing Gary Soto's short story "La Bamba" with the whole class (anything you've read together will work). They design t-shirts that feature traits and story elements to reveal the nature of a...
K20 LEARN
Whose Manifest Destiny? Westward Expansion
Your land is my land! Young historians investigate the concept of Manifest Destiny used by the United States government to justify western expansion. Jigsaw groups read primary source documents to gain an understanding of the movement...
Literacy Design Collaborative
Catching a Grenade: How Word Choice Impacts Meaning and Tone
Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...
EngageNY
Making a Claim: Moon Shadow’s Point of View of the Immediate Aftermath
Body paragraphs are the building blocks of every essay. Pupils view and discuss a model essay using a rubric to evaluate one of its supporting paragraphs. Next, scholars use what they've learned to continue drafting their own literary...
EngageNY
Reading for Fluency: Readers Theater about the Rainforest (Page 33)
Lights, camera, action. Scholars use page 33 of The Most Beautiful
Roof in the World to create a readers theater. They work in triads and use sticky notes to mark and create their own speaking parts from sections of the text. They then...
Curated OER
Digital Poetry Books
Students, after reviewing the writing process and assessing how to use a digital camera to take creative photos, create a Digital Poetry Book. They incorporate the use of Microsoft Photo Draw and Publisher for the creation of their...
Curated OER
Poetry Pop-Up
Third graders, after exploring the process of writing poetry through imagery words that go beyond pen and paper, create a Poetry Pop-Up Book. They incorporate the use of the Thesaurus and clip-art/digital photography to assist them in...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Patriots or Traitors - Point of View in the War for Independence
Patriots or traitors? Class members analyze images that present widely differing views of the Boston Tea Party, identifying the point of view of the image, the propaganda devices used, and the intended audience.
Secondary Solutions
Of Mice and Men: A Literature Guide
Whether you are planning on using Of Mice and Men for whole-class reading or as a selection for literature circles; whether you are new to John Steinbeck's novel, or it has long been a part of your curriculum, you will find a wealth of...