American Literature Teacher Resources

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...

To begin this instructional activity, the instructor will present a PowerPoint detailing the genres of Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. Learners will follow along with an instructional sheet that will aid in the identification of...

Celebrate and honor Native American culture with this set of graphic organizers that showcases literature like The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and A Boy Called Slow as well as three other Native American literature books. Learners compare...

Study the transformation of American literature starting from Colonial times up until the present. Each of the nine periods (Romanticism, Realism, Postmodernism, etc.) is introduced and important literary agents from that period are...

Students match American Literature authors with their short stories, poems, and books. In this American Literature lesson, students are given an overview of the authors and their main works. Then students independently do a matching...

Analyze the depth and beauty of American Literature by reading Emily Dickinson's letters and poems. The class analyzes Dickinson's poetic style and discusses Thomas Wentworth Higginson's editorial relationship with Dickinson. They pay...

The four major trends of the 18th century (The Enlightenment, the Great Awakening, British global ambitions, and economic disagreements) are the focus of a PowerPoint that places in context such influences as deism, mercantilism,...

Explore transcendentalism through American literature. Learners examine the setting of Henry David Thoreau's Walden through a series of excerpts and photographs. This lesson includes a review that discusses the pros and cons of its...

Students read a collection of stories and watch videos to learn about the Jewish assimilation in American literature. In this American literature lesson, students watch videos about Judaism, read stories from a contemporary Jewish...

Practice grade-level reading comprehension with this lesson, in which middle schoolers read different examples of Native American literature. They discover different cultures while examining their own, and answer questions related to the...

Introduce your class to American poets with this 8-day research project. After reading sample poems, learners choose a poet to research. In the computer lab, scholars complete guided online research that they put together into a final...

Read excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "American Scholar" to address and analyze passages from American literary works. Seniors will discuss three quotations from the text and read excerpts from the address. They then work in...

Here is a complex lesson plan that interweaves the history of the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration with the study of poetry, art, and blues music from the Harlem Renaissance. The plan helps young historians develop a deep...

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

Explore the life and writing of John Steinbeck. A 48-slide presentation introduces the famous American author, his California heritage, and his impressive collection of published work. Viewers are then introduced to Of Mice and Men, one...

Explore the life and works of the famous American author, Ernest Hemingway. Middle and high schoolers gain appreciation for the author through this Webquest, detailing his time in Michigan, Paris, Africa, and Cuba. Consider using this...

How do writers use words to protest injustice, challenge the status quo, and shape their own identities? Individuals watch and discuss a video, read author biographies, write poetry and journals, develop a slideshow, and complete a...

The Great Gatsby has become one of the most iconic novels in American literature. An eBook allows readers to access the full text of the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. With the original words and paragraph breaks intact, new generations...

Betsy Ross - fact and myth. As an introduction to American Literature, class members become detectives and search web sites to find information about the flag, prominent places it has been displayed (on the moon, at ground zero, in...

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...

Use this presentation about Thomas Paine's The American Crisis series to guide any number of assignments. The slides provide instructions for a literary terms assignment, an open response journal entry, two research writing projects, and...

I love Faulkner, his experimental style and stream of consciousness are so exciting. Your learners can analyze William Faulkner and his novel, The Sound and the Fury by defining his place in American literary history and exploring his...

Young scholars compare art and literature by examining a contemporary painting by Glenn Ligon and the essay by James Baldwin that inspired it. They write an essay about a personal experience that relates to the theme of being an "outsider."

As the title suggests, the text-heavy slides here are designed to accompany a background lecture for an American literature class. The life and works of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper are examined as examples of the early...