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Study Guide
Penguin Books

A Teacher's Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of Poems by Robert Frost A Boy’s Will and North of Boston

For Teachers 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Here's a must-have guide for instructors who use Robert Frost's poems in their classes. The 24-page guide focuses on poems included in Frost's first two volumes of poems, background information on the poet, and what Frost thought was an...
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Lesson Plan
K20 LEARN

Watch Your Tone: Tone Analysis Through Music And Nonfiction

For Teachers 10th - 11th
Identifying the tone of a piece of writing or the author's attitude toward the subject matter can be difficult for learners. Simplify the process with a lesson that begins with skits, moves to songs and their lyrics, and then to passages...
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Unit Plan
Mr. Ambrose

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

For Teachers 11th - 12th Standards
Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...
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Lesson Plan
New York State Education Department

TASC Transition Curriculum: Workshop 4

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Why is it important to use precise language? Participants explore this question in the fourth activity in a series of 15 on effective instruction. Perfect for all content areas, the activity promotes appropriate language choice through...
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Lesson Plan
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Star Wars in the Classroom

"Shakespeare and Star Wars": Lesson Plan Day 1

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
"Now is the summer of our happiness/Made winter by this sudden, fierce attack!" Luke Skywalker meets Hamlet in a 10-lesson unit based on Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope. Using Star Wars® as source...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Analyzing Figurative Language and How the Author’s Word Choice Affects Tone and Meaning (Chapter 3)

For Teachers 6th Standards
How figurative language affects the tone and meaning in Chapter Three of Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy is the focus of a series of exercises that ask readers to locate, record, and analyze Curtis' word choices.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Press Review

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
How can word choice affect a political speech? Middle and high schoolers examine the text of the 1999 State of the Union Address, and then determine how newspaper articles and television reports describe and analyze the event. Use this...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Help your class find their writing voices with this activity which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Word Up!

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Study the importance of word choice in informational text. Middle and high schoolers locate unfamiliar words and phrases in newspaper articles of their choosing, and use online word sites to explore the definitions and histories of each....
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Who Could Have Been Who

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Can word choice affect a candidate's likeability? Use a New York Times lesson to explore how a presidential candidate's likeability factor can fluctuate in public opinion polls. Young readers choose a presidential election from their...
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

A Positive Spin

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Study word choice and connotation in advertising. Readers examine campaign ads, both negative and positive, from the 2006 mid-term election before discussing an article and analyze a campaign of any candidate they choose. Finally, they...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Tell-Tale Hearts of Writers

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Knock, knock, knock...Creep out your class with a critical thinking lesson focused on word relationships in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." They investigate  the relationship between word choice, mood, and interpretation of a...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Shakespeare and Poe Teach Six-Trait Writing

For Teachers 5th - 8th
A Six-Trait Writing instructional activity helps your middle schoolers liven up their word choice and shows them how to evaluate their own writing. Class members take a close look at the language used in poems by Shakespeare, Kipling,...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Remembrance of Things Past

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Engage critical and social thinking by exploring the value of language and word choice. The class considers the article "The Silence of the Historic Present" and analyzes several presidential speeches. They engage in class discussion,...
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Writing
Curated OER

Protest Letter

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
What a fantastic resource to guide youngsters in persuasive letter writing. They read a brief letter to the editor and answer question about the author's purpose, word choice, and structure. Next, scholars draft their own letter by...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The "Write" Stuff: Strategies and Conventions for Imaginative Writing

For Teachers 6th
A comprehensive and immersive series of lessons that examines various aspects of story development leads learners into writing a narrative of their own. Writers develop an understanding of the writing process as they use the learning...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Revision

For Teachers 7th Standards
Young poets learn the value of using a thesaurus when crafting and revising poems. They examine poems rich in figurative language and then a revised version with the figurative language removed. To demonstrate what they have learned,...
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Tone

For Teachers 7th Standards
Identifying the tone in a piece of writing can be tricky. Readers don't have the advantage of studying the images and colors used in a painting or the instruments and sounds of a song. The second lesson in this poetry unit teaches tweens...
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Interactive
Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Close Reading of Prose: Practice 2 (English II Reading)

For Students 10th Standards
The tone is easy to hear but more challenging to detect in written texts. Users of this interactive learn how to closely observe the diction and words writers use to convey their feelings about their subject. They examine passages that...
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Interactive
Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Diction and Tone (English II Reading)

For Students 10th Standards
Words carry baggage. In addition to their literal, denotative meaning, words also carry the weight of the associations and connotations attached to the word—the connotations of words writers use to create the tone of a piece. An...
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Interactive
Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Syntax (English II Reading)

For Students 10th
Lesson five in the series focuses on syntax and the elements that make sentences enjoyable. Learners practice building different clauses and phrases and using figures of speech and rhetorical and literary devices.
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Abigail and John in Love

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
The second lesson in the series asks groups to analyze an exchange of love letters between Abigail and John Adams. Scholars identify the many allusions and references in the letters and consider what they can infer about the writers.
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Lesson Plan
Anti-Defamation League

Intent vs. Impact: Why Does it Matter?

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Contrary to the popular saying, words can hurt. Words matter! Tweens and teens can reflect on how words impact others even if the intent wasn't how the words were perceived. After examining an Instagram post where Lizzo apologized for...