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Lesson Plan
Maine Content Literacy Project

Introduction to the Short Story

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
How should pupils read short stories? Set them up for this unit with an introductory instructional activity that goes over the main characteristics of a short story and starts learners off reading their first short story of the unit. In...
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Unit Plan
Curated OER

A High-Interest Novel Helps Struggling Readers Confront Bullying in Schools

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Bully, bullied, or bystander? Paul Langan's The Bully is the anchor text in a unit that examines bullying and violence. After a close reading of the text, readers imagine themselves as the characters and consider how they would react in...
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Unit Plan
Random House

Teacher's Guide: The Hobbit: The Enchanting Prelude to Lord of the Rings

For Teachers 6th - 9th Standards
The Odyssey, Star Wars, The Hunger Games. Odysseus, Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen. Add The Hobbit and Bilbo Baggins to these lists, and you have a unit examining classic and contemporary myths, legends, and folktales with hero and...
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Lesson Plan
Shakespeare Uncovered

Merely Players

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
“. . . one man in his time plays many parts,/His acts being seven ages.” Jaques famous speech from Act II, scene vii of As you Like It sets the stage for an examination of the roles people play. Class members not only consider the roles...
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Lesson Plan
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Shmoop

ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.10

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
How do you assess what your pupils have learned over the course of the year? Find out how competent they are at reading and analyzing age-level literature with the ideas presented here. Included in this resource are two suggested...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Exploring Selected Haiku by Issa

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
If your class doesn't know what a haiku is, show them two examples from the Japanese poet Issa (both included here), and have them make some observations. How long are they? What is the structure? A video and a list of questions help...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Exploring Contrasts in "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Middle schoolers analyze the speaker's ideas and tone in the Billy Collins poem "The Lanyard." After identifying how each of the five senses is addressed in the poem, they compare images to draw conclusions about the speaker and his...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Words In The News

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
A complete resource from BBC World Service provides informational text for English or ESL classes to teach vocabulary, grammar, and reading skills. Learners participate in small group work, whole class discussions, and role-plays to...
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Handout
Orlando Shakes

Comedy of Errors

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
To err is human ... and also leads to some hilarious situations. A script introduces readers to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, a play full of slapstick humor and other funny elements. Although lacking in activities, the text works well...
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eBook
Planet e-Book

Oliver Twist

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
"Please, sir. May I have some more?" An eBook version of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens introduces readers to the text that inspired the classic line. An oldie but a goodie, book worms see why this novel is so beloved.
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eBook
Planet e-Book

The Great Gatsby

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
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...
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Lesson Plan
Maine Content Literacy Project

Introduction to Literacy Criticism

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
As learners continue to examine a short story of their choice, they take some time to look at analysis completed by others on the same story. In the eleventh lesson in a series of fourteen, pupils explore various sites for literary...
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Lesson Plan
Maine Content Literacy Project

Exploring Text with the iMovie Application

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Get your class going on one of the final assessments for a unit on short stories by introducing iMovie and its main features. In this tenth lesson in a series of fourteen, pupils take some time to explore iMovie before conducting an...
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Lesson Plan
Maine Content Literacy Project

Setting in "Hills Like White Elephants"

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Continue your study of the short story with the next lesson in this fourteen-lesson series. After wrapping up a study of "Hills Like White Elephants" through a quiz and discussion of the setting, learners are introduced to the final...
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Lesson Plan
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National Endowment for the Humanities

Thirteen Ways of Reading a Modernist Poem

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
High schoolers analyze modernist poetry and the role of speaker in example poems. Learners study modernist poems from the Romanticism and Victorian periods as well as Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Using a...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Creating Dramatic Monologues from The Grapes of Wrath

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
The characters in The Grapes of Wrath come to life through an activity that asks groups to craft a dramatic monologue for a character in John Steinbeck's National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  Writers are challenged to...
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Lesson Plan
National Endowment for the Humanities

Charles Baudelaire: Poète Maudit (The Cursed Poet)

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
After learning the main ideas of the Decadent movement, learners work in small groups to read and translate poems by the French poet Charles Baudelaire using basic etymology skills. They then read the accurate English translations to see...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

"Tear him for his bad verses:" Cinna the poet and Shakespeare's Sonnets

For Teachers 10th Standards
Poor Cinna, the poet. His dream of “things unlucky” certainly comes true as the mob tears him apart, at first because they mistake him for Cinna, the conspirator, and then continue to “tear him to pieces for his bad verses.” As part of...
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Lesson Plan
National Endowment for the Humanities

Neh: Edsit Ement: Introduction to Modernist Poetry

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Understanding the context of modernism is important for students before they analyze modernist texts themselves. To that end, this is a three-lesson curriculum unit: 1."Understanding the Context of Modernist Poetry;" 2. "Thirteen Ways of...
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Handout
Poetry Foundation

Poetry Foundation: Dream in Color: Teacher Resources Glossary, Credits [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This website contains a glossary with definitions of poetic terms and a bibliography of additional African-American poets and books and recommended reading.
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Handout
Poetry Foundation

Poetry Foundation: Aphra Behn (1640 1689)

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Best known as a dramatist in the late seventeeth century, this site highlights the poetry of Aphra Behn and gives a detailed description of her life and influence. Includes bibliography and links to full text of many of her poems.
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Website
Luminarium

Luminarium: Robert Herrick

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Part of the Herrick section of the Luminarium site, this is a concise biography with links to more information.
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Website
Luminarium

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This site provides a selection of major authors and works associated with English literature, ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to Sir Isaac Newton. Each author's page contains online texts of the author's works, essays about the author and...
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eBook
Luminarium

Luminarium: The Works of John Donne

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
A clickable list to selected full-text works by John Donne, including songs, sonnets, elegies, epigrams, and satires.