Curated OER
Lincoln is in the House! ("Name-Dropping" Poems and the Power of Connotation)
“What’s in a name?” Just about everything. Barack Obama, Vincent van Gogh, Justin Bieber. Famous names evoke a multitude of reactions and poets often use the names of famous people in their works precisely because names carry...
National Endowment for the Humanities
In Emily Dickinson's Own Words: Letters and Poems
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...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
Explore the idea of democratic poetry. Upper graders read Walt Whitman, examining daguerreotypes, and compare Whitman to Langston Hughes. They describe aspects of Whitman's I Hear America Singing to Langston Hughes' Let America Be...
Monarch High School
TP-CASTT Practice
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...
Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Cognates (English III Reading)
Did you know that "30-40 percent of all words in English have a related word in Spanish?" This fact launches an interactive study of cognates appearing the same in English and Spanish. Learners demonstrate what they have learned about...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Close Reading in the Classroom
Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...
Curated OER
No Regrets: a Poetry Analysis
Learners read a poem and use the TPCASTT strategy for analysis. In this poetry analysis lesson, students journal about their future goals and read John Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player." Learners discuss the purpose of the poem and...
Curated OER
Literary Terms
Seriously, 93 slides of literary terms? Yes, and well worth the time, although perhaps not all at once. The beauty here is in the concise, easy-to-understand definitions for such well-known terms as imagery and personification, as well...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - The Ruin
Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Early American Poets
The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...
Curated OER
A Modest Proposal: Irony Made Understandable with Rock and Roll
Who doesn't love music? Poems and songs will engage your high school class in a discussion about irony. Use songs like "Rockin' in the Free World" or "Born in the U.S.A." to illustrate the ironic point of view. Print the lyrics so...
Curated OER
Focus On Figurative Language in Prose
Students examine the use of literary prose in the story, "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed." In this literary prose lesson, students investigate the use of imagery, metaphor, and simile in the story. They tell how author's purpose is...
Curated OER
Bloody Business
Students research word frequencies in Macbeth and create a frozen picture inspired by a word. For this Macbeth lesson, students view Blood Will Have Blood and discuss the dual meaning of the word "blood." Students identify five major...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.4
Your assessment is to figure out if I am being figurative or connotative with this statement: This is a great resource. Can’t do it? Then you had better review how to break down Common Core skill RL.11-12.4. In simple language that you...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - My Last Dutchess
Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be instructional activityed by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic...
Ereading Worksheets
Figurative Language for Edgar Allen Poe
Are your classes weary of dreary worksheets? Are the learners nearly napping? Thrill them, fill them with delight with an interactive instructional activity that asks them to identify the figurative language Edgar Allen Poe uses to add...