Curated OER
My Name is___________.
Read to gain an understanding of the author's intent or purpose. Learners analyze a persuasive text, identify the author's purpose, and evaluate the claims used as support. They then compose a persuasive essay of their own.
Deer Valley Unified School District
Close Reading: Analyzing Mood and Tone
The AP Literature and Composition exam is all about close reading. Test takers are presented with a passage and asked to analyze how an author uses literary devices to create a desired effect. Prepare your students for the exam with a...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to Short Story Writers Say
There are so many authors of short stories, and your class can have the chance to study quite a few. This seventh lesson in a series of fourteen continues the decision-making process for the final assessment: a short story author study....
Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Simile and Metaphor (English III Reading)
The key idea in this interactive exercise designed for high schoolers is that figurative language, especially similes, and metaphors, add layers of meaning to a text. Users examine examples from speeches, ads, movie dialogue, and poems,...
University of Virginia
Analyzing Social Commentary in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues to be one of the most frequently banned books. The satire and social commentary present challenges when using the book as a core text. Direct readers' attention to how Twain uses plot,...
Curated OER
Identifying Science Fiction
Pupils discuss works of science fiction that they read, highlight aspects that made each a part of science fiction genre, identify formal literary elements, and discuss ways each can be developed through science fiction.
Maine Content Literacy Project
Exploring Text with the iMovie Application
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 instructional activity in a series of fourteen, pupils take some time to explore iMovie before...
Curated OER
Tone and Mood
How are mood and tone similar? Different? Help your readers understand the difference between the two with this helpful guide. On the first page, they read the definition for both tone and mood and identify words that are describe each....
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3
Identifying an author’s choice, especially choices that concern craft and literary devices, is a difficult skill to teach. Here's an activity that will make your job easier. The resource breaks down how to teach the skill to novice,...
Curated OER
Twelfth Night: QAR
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is used to model for readers how to craft four levels of questions that promote comprehension. Questions that can be answered with evidence right there in the text, questions that require readers to think and...
Sandra Effinger
Bulletin Board Project
Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a character...
Curated OER
Introduction To Literary Analysis
Explore the fascinating ways in which authors use specific literary devices to create interesting and realistic texts. Using non-fiction articles with the subject of rogue waves, an excerpt from The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger,...
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
Modernism in Poetry, Painting, and Music
Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...
Curated OER
PERCEIVINGT A CULTURE THROUGH ITS LITERATURE
Studentsexamine cultural values in literature, identify the cultural assumptions, prejudices, and purposes of authors and translators, use historical perspective to determine if the values and lifestyle depicted apply to contemporary...
Curated OER
Satire in Fiction
Twelfth graders identify satire in various fictional texts. In this language arts lesson, 12th graders will learn to define satire, parody, and caricature. Students will identify different forms of satire in historical and modern-day...
Curated OER
Text Elements—Vampires
Students explore the tone and style of passages from horror genre literature. In this literary elements lesson, students read The Vampire by John Stagg and the War of the World script by H.G. Wells, Students write about the way the...
Curated OER
1920s Images and Ideals PowerPoint Project
Students explore Teaching the American Twenties, noting fashion, life styles, Hollywood, key authors, key people, and key events. They explore the sites and note what they can identify from the time period for this collection. They write...
Curated OER
Wildwood Dancing: Anticipation Guide
Themes in Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier's young adult fantasy novel, are the focus of an anticipation guide that asks individuals to agree or disagree with a series of statements.
Curated OER
Could You Repeat That?
Students participate in an oral story telling activity designed to show how story embellishments occur. They read "Beowulf" and identify incongruities that suggest additions and embellishments over the years.
Curated OER
Literature and Thought of the American Colonies
Eleventh graders analyze works by John Donne and Thomas Heriot. For this Colonial America lesson, 11th graders examine pieces of literature, documents, and video clips to identify the issues regarding religion in the colonies. Student...
Curated OER
Sound Devices in Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction
Students examine the impact of sound devices in poetry. In this poetry instructional activity, students read the listed poems and identify uses of alliteration, repetition, consonance, rhythm, rhyme, and slang. Students discuss how sound...
National Endowment for the Humanities
John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath": The Inner Chapters
Here’s a must-have resource for anyone using The Grapes of Wrath. Everything from guiding questions to background information, from photographs to documentary films, from activities to assessments is included in a richly detailed packet...
Curated OER
Seeing the Image in Imagery: A Lesson Plan Using Film
In our increasingly visual society, it is often difficult for some readers to create a mental picture of a picture created only with words. An image-rich text like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby can therefore, present a real...