Alice Walker Teacher Resources

“Mirrors” or aspects from a story that reflect a personal text-to-self connection, and “windows,” an aspect that gives insight into a different way of being, are the focus of an activity designed for Alice Walker’s story. Readers select...

Should treasured family heirlooms be used or preserved? This resource provides readers with an opportunity to examine the actions of characters in Alice Walker’s short story, as well as their own sense of heritage. The questions could be...

Alice Walker discusses the influence the strong women in her family and her experiences growing up on a plantation in Eatonton, Georgia had on her writing. Part of the American Masters series, the short video includes images of her...

Zora Neale Hurston, her life, her work as an anthropologist recording the customs and speech of southern Black people, and her novels would have remained largely ignored if not for the efforts of Alice Walker. An American Masters video...

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Alice Walker's poem "Women" provides ninth graders the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to identify how a writer's choice of syntax and diction contribute to the development of the theme of the work.

In this online interactive reading comprehension worksheet, students respond to 15 multiple choice questions about Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Students may submit their answers to be scored.

A clip from the documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth features Walker discussing her writing process and why she chose to write The Color Purple as an epistolary novel. The resource is part of PBS' American Masters series.

A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...

Gabrielle Union discusses the role Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, plays in her life. She stresses the importance of readers being able to find reflections of themselves in literature.

In this literature worksheet, students respond to 12 short answer and essay questions about Walker's The Color Purple. Students may also link to an online interactive quiz on the novel at the bottom of the page.

Students compare authors Rachel Carson and Mary Eliza Church Terrell. They read an introduction by Alice Walker and summarize the main points. They also identify the language she uses to persuade readers. They write their own activist...

Great minds think alike. Scholars read two texts and compare how the authors develop the same central idea. Readers analyze "Women" by Alice Walker and "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. They discuss word use and new...

Discover how writers express identity in their writing. Learners explore how issues of identity surface in the literature of minority writers. Scholars watch a video, read and discuss biographies, conduct research, engage in creative...

Learners can chart what they know, what they would like to know, how they plan to learn, and what they have learned from Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Using questions about women's rights, kids study the themes of the novel and think...

Students appreciate the life and writings of celebrated author Alice Walker. They encounter new perspectives and diverse views through the characters in one of her essays. Students explore the issue of cross-species communication.

Students explore women and music in the 20th century. In this music lesson, students study the relationship between literature and music through The Color Purple and music by Ethel Waters, MA Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ella...

Have you heard of the QAR strategy? If your class is reading The Color Purple, provide them with this two-page worksheet to get them thinking. With the strategy, readers are introduced to four types of questions (right there, think and...

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is the subject of a Crash Course Literature episode narrated by John Green. Here, Green shares the critical reactions to the novel as well as his own thoughts about its importance.

Truman Capote, originator of the true-crime novel, is the subject of a short mini-biography, an overview of his cultural impact and his most famous works.

After brainstorming the various aspects of cultural identity, class members interview each other, examine video clips, and read stories to discover how these aspects reveal one's cultural identity. Individuals then craft a quilt square...

For this reading worksheet, students learn the sight word "purple" by reading 8 sentences. Students cut and paste picture cards which correspond to the sentences. Example: "Popsicles can be purple."

In this recognizing the color purple activity, students create a booklet of every day objects that are the color purple. Students read 9 pages.

Third graders explore the color purple. In this visual arts lesson plan, 3rd graders sort purple objects in various ways and create the color purple by mixing paint. Students create a purple portrait of a character from the play, Lost...