Scholars use technology to explore poetry and its related elements, such as theme, figures of speech, and other literary devices. They complete four poetry projects including a poem analysis with a concept web, an interactive poem...

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...

Water is the source of life. It appears in poetry in both peaceful and torrential descriptions; it appears in earth science in its liquid, gaseous, and solid states. Combine these interpretations of our planet's most precious and...

Take poetry off the page and put it into terms of movement, physical space and, finally, music with this series of three lessons from the Smithsonian Institution. This resource introduces students to two poetic forms that originated as...

It's that time of year to consider how Shakespeare selects his images and structures his Sonnet 73 to develop the meaning of the poem. Class members examine the rhyme scheme, the indented lines, the conceit, and the images used in each...

Tasking class members to analyze a poem can strike fear into the hearts of many learners. Here's a worksheet that takes the mystery out of the process by providing questions about what to look for in the text and to the devices poets use...

The emotional and spiritual oppression of slavery in the African-American experience is the focus of this lesson. Middle schoolers analyze various texts by Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou related to freedom and oppression....

What motivated Europeans to explore the New World, and what effects did their exploration have on Native American populations? The second installment of a 16-part American Passages series prompts pupils to watch a video and read several...

Class groups examine a series of poems that use Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a motif in Holocaust poetry. Included are questions, notes to the teacher, and bibliographical information on each poem. The activities could be...

The Navajo people build their dwellings with the doors facing the rising sun in the east to welcome wealth and fortune. Pupils learn about the traditions of the Navajo people in the first part of a 16-part unit. They explore American...

Metaphors are word pictures, creating images in our brains that draw readers to consider how two seemingly unrelated items are alike. Poems by Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Shihad Nye provide learners with an opportunity to...

Introduce your class to ekphrastic poetry with an exercise that asks them to examine Edward Hooper's painting House by the Railroad and Edward Hirsch's poem "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad." After a close reading...

In this literary analysis worksheet, students respond to 4 short answer and essay questions based on the theme of morality in the Keats poem "Ode to a Nightingale." Three extra reading activities are also included.

Acronyms can help learners remember facts and analyze poetry. This resource includes graphic organizers for TP-CASTT, SOAPS, SOAPSTone, and DIDLS. Class members can try out one or all of these strategies to assist with that difficult job...

As an introduction to literary criticism, class members recreate I.A. Richards' close reading experiment. Individuals select a poem, paraphrase the story, focus on the imagery used, consider what the imagery adds to the tale, and...

The beauty of a poem is lost without an understanding of its tone. Middle schoolers connect author's purpose and word choice to four poems in a literary analysis activity, which prompts them to note each poem's tone and meaning.

Where do directors and set designers get their ideas so that the set they build creates the mood and atmosphere the director wants for a production? From the script! Introduce theater high schoolers to the script analysis techniques used...

Bob Dylan's selection as the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first songwriter ever to receive the honor, has focused the attention of a new generation on the work of the legendary artist. Class members...

It’s poetry T.I.M.E! Individuals use the T.I.M.E. format (T = Title, thought, and theme;  I = Imagery and figurative language; M = music and sound; E = emotion) to study a poet, collect poems that have a similar theme, and create a...

Using Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Hart Crane's The Bridge as models, class groups first craft their own epic poems for 1900 and, using primary sources, create a multi-media presentation that captures the sights and...

Work on literal and figurative meanings with a lesson focused on Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" and "The Road Not Taken." Readers identify the literary devices used by the poet to set the poems' themes, settings, and narrative...

W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is featured on a worksheet that asks readers to respond to a series of reading comprehension questions.

In this online interactive reading comprehension learning exercise, students respond to 15 multiple choice questions based on poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Students may submit their answers to be scored.

Click on and read the poem "The Great Figure" by William Carlos Williams, and then answer the four short answer and essay questions based on themes therein. A link to the summary and analysis questions is also included.