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Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays" serves as the anchor text in a five-part lesson that takes the mystery out of poetry analysis by modeling explicit strategies for pupils to employ to conduct a close reading of a poem. After...
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Unit Plan
Louisiana Department of Education

The Metamorphosis

For Teachers 11th - Higher Ed Standards
How can something be true even if it didn't happen? Invite your classes to investigate the truths found in the world of magical realism as they analyze short stories, poems, informational texts, video, and art from this genre.
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Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Heroes Are Made of This: Studying the Character of Heroes

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
What makes heroes and villains? A six-part unit plan asks young scholars to explore the concept of heroism and the characteristics they consider heroic and unheroic. Groups create character maps that focus on how characters are shaped by...
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Interactive
PBS

Exploring the Drive to Create in Frankenstein

For Students 10th - 12th Standards
Is it hubris that drives the creative process? Is it the desire to be remembered long past death? An interactive asks readers of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and Percy Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" to consider what this wife and...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Exploring First-Person Narrative

For Teachers 9th - Higher Ed Standards
If you really want to know, this is a terrific lesson all about narratives, which is just a fancy way of saying telling stories. And you get to do it without being phony or anything. My favorite part is that you get to read a passage...
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Interactive
PBS

Shifting Perspectives in Toni Morrison's Beloved

For Students 10th - 12th Standards
An interactive provides readers with an opportunity to record their reactions to Beloved, Toni Morrison's powerful narrative based on the life of Margaret Garner. Prompts ask them to consider how the shifting point of view contributes to...
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Lesson Plan
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PBS

A Time and Place: The Importance of Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
A strong community acts as a family during difficult times. The evidence for the family aspects of Maycomb is abundant in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is the focus of a lesson plan on the importance of setting as it relates...
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Lesson Plan
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PBS

The Legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird: Continuing Atticus’s Fight for Justice

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Tom Robinson was only one man in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, but he represents many people throughout history who have not found justice in the American justice system. Language arts students discuss the theme of social justice...
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Interactive
PBS

Figuring Out Figurative Language in The Outsiders

For Students 7th - 9th Standards
S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders is well known for its relatable characters and plot, but don't forget how effective the book's figurative language can be! Check out an interactive resource that explores how figurative language comes alive...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Symbolism and Personification in The Outsiders

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
A shirt can't really swallow you—right? Readers find examples of symbolism and personification in S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders with two straightforward lessons.
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Lesson Plan
Read Write Think

Book Report Alternative: Rewind the Plot!

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Have you ever looked for a new way to teach an old concept? Scholars thinking about the rising action of a story in a whole new perspective. However, Book Report Alternative: Rewind the Plot! challenges readers and allows for much...
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Lesson Plan
Institute for Humane Education

Not So Fair and Balanced: Analyzing Bias in the Media

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Life is not always fair. Who's heard that before? This same concept moves to a larger scale using prejudice and bias. Pupils discuss where prejudice attitudes derive and how they develop throughout life. Reading comprehension...
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Unit Plan
ReadWriteThink

Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Seeing Words in a New Way

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...
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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, students 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...