Curated OER
The Outsiders
Are you working on an Outsiders unit? Use this list of activities to deepen your middle schoolers' understanding of the novel. After reading S.E. Hinton's novel, young readers work on three required activities, including participating in...
Ohio Department of Education
A Glossary of Literary Terms
If you're tired of defining allusion, onomatopoeia, and satire for your language arts students, hand out a complete list of literary devices to keep the terms straight. Each term includes a definition that is easy to understand and...
Speak Truth to Power
Harry Wu: Forced Labor
Over the course of two class periods, young historians explore human rights issues; specifically, forced labor in China. This resource provides everything you need, including relevant vocabulary, an anticipatory activity, and a...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event
Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....
Curated OER
Poetic Justice: Understanding the Life of a Tethered Dog
The Humane Society provides a lesson in which class members explore the issue of tethering dogs. Through the resources used -- a comic, a poem, and narrative and expository writings -- class members realize that messages can be conveyed...
Curated OER
Cartoons for the Classroom: 2008 Presidential Primaries
Take a trip back in time with this political cartoon analysis worksheet, which has scholars reading background information on the heated 2008 primary campaign to help them approach two political cartoons. Three talking points (or writing...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 11: Setting
Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 13: Character Development 2
Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme
Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...
Curated OER
Anonymous Patriots: Songs of the Revolution
Give your class a deeper understanding of the context and meaning behind early American song lyrics. By reading the lyrics to "Yankee Doodle" and "Revolutionary Tea," high schoolers will practice analysis by examining the structure and...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Creating Narrative
Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The lesson plan...
EngageNY
Reviewing Visual Elements of a Graphic Novel: Max Axiom
Pass the tea! Using the resource, scholars participate in a Tea Party protocol to analyze text and images about inventions that helped meet societal demands. After sharing their observations with each other, they discuss visual elements...
National Museum of the American Indian
Fritz Scholder: A Study Guide
In this engaging activity involving close analysis of abstract expressionist art, your class members will not only discover more about artist Friz Scholder's Native American art, but they will also have the opportunity to consider...
Recorded Books
The Outsiders Lesson Plan
S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders is the anchor text for a how-to primer for using audiobooks in the classroom.
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.
Curated OER
A Novel Idea
Students use Moodle to participate in a chat session to complete a character analysis for a novel they've studied. In this novel analysis and technology lesson, students are assigned a character from a specific chapter and use Moodle to...
Curated OER
Awesome Animals
Students collect data from classmates about their favorite animal. They use the ClarisWorks graphing program to enter data, graph results, and interpret data.
Curated OER
Preparation -- The Right Way to Help and FOrm for Poetic Reflection
Pupils prepare for their service learning project by listening to a representative from the Lake Michigan Federation. They volunteer their time to clean up the coast line. They reflect on the event by writing a poem about their experiences.
Curated OER
Colson Whitehead
Students read an excerpt from Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist. In this author analysis lesson, students read about poet and author Colson Whitehead. Students analyze a poem and a piece of fiction of Whitehead's.
Curated OER
Lost Lyrics of Love, Lust, and Losers
Twelfth graders explore the connection between poetry and the "real world". They are reminded of the elements used in poetic interpretation, and use them to analyze various texts.
Curated OER
Lessons of the Indian Epics: The Ramayana
Students read a version of Ramayana and explore the elements of the epic hero cycle. In this Ramayana analysis lesson, students retell the basic narrative of the Ramayana and identify the main characters. Students identify elements of...
Curated OER
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Chapters 20, 21, 22, 23
Students complete chapter analysis activities for the Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this novel analysis lesson, students read and discuss chapters 20, 21, and 22 from the novel. Students then read and listen to the...
Curated OER
Out of the Dust
Students create a poem that expresses the physical and emotional turmoil of living through the Dust Bowl. In this Out of the Dust lesson, students research facts about the time period and discuss the cause-effect patterns associated...
Curated OER
At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners Questions
In this reading comprehension worksheet, students respond to 4 short answer and essay questions based on the poem "At the round earth's imagined corners," (Holy Sonnet 7).