Do you know the setting of The Count of Monte Cristo? What about the main characters? Explore the elements of Alexandre Dumas' novel with a reading comprehension activity. Kids toss boxes with literary elements written on each side,...

Just as Bud, from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, had rules to live by, so does the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, but how do the two relate? Pupils delve deep into the poem's third stanza, participate in a grand...

Class members create literary mandalas for two characters from Maus, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about his father’s experiences with the Holocaust. After finding quotes that reveal three good traits and three bad traits of each...

Readers of Ordinary People employ a cubing strategy based on Bloom’s Taxonomy to analyze, from multiple perspectives, an excerpt from Chapter 10 of Judith Guest’s novel.  The excerpt, a rationale and complete directions for the...

Activate your pupils' thinking before reading chapter five of Ordinary People. Learners decide whether they agree or disagree with six statements and discuss their ideas in small groups. They then read chapter five and determine...

Get your class talking, even debating, about Gary Paulsen's popular novel Canyons. As they finish chapters 10-12, they complete the following discussion web concerning Brennan and the skull. They fill out the graphic organizer provided...

“What does it mean to be patriotic?” “Should grades factor in to a student’s eligibility for extracurricular activities?” Class members complete an anticipation guide that asks them to respond to a series of statements that highlight...

Introduce the themes of Fever 1793 and determine your class members’ level of background knowledge with an anticipation guide for Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel about the yellow fever epidemic that swept Philadelphia. For each prompt,...

Bringing together the young artists and the young organizers in your class, this lesson takes that popular topic of tessellations and gives it algebraic roots. After covering a few basic properties and definitions, learners attack the...

Review concepts and terms after reading Running Out of Time. Learners each come up with a few terms that they think are important and then participate in a list-group-label exercise, paying close attention to the two main years featured...

Round out your unit on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis with a series of reading comprehension questions. As kids read, they challenge each other to answer specific connection questions from the text.

Your plane has crashed in the Sahara desert. What do you do? Explore the possibilities with a role-playing activity based on Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince. In groups, kids decide whether they would walk to find help...

Terror, mystery, excitement. American writers of the 19th century, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, used these elements to create morally ambiguous tales that challenged the prevailing belief in...

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

Chapter nine of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath provides the text for an exercise that asks readers to think deeply about the items the Joads left behind and what these items might represent.

What kinds of questions could be asked with different pieces of literature? Use QAR questions to help your middle schoolers develop the skills to find information in a text. Thorough directions, a text excerpt, and a set of reading...

How do your learners react in conflicts with authority figures? Help them begin Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club with an activity about different conflicts that kids can run into with their parents. Each scenario prompts learners to rank...

To better understand the conflict between Amir and Hassan, two characters in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, readers assume the voice of one of the boys and craft a letter to the other that explains his feelings and concerns.

What does it mean to be alone and isolated? What would you do if you were all alone in a strange place? Kids ponder these questions as they prepare to read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

There's nothing like the Wild Wild West! Scholars investigate the American Frontier through the eyes of Kit Carson. To complete the first installment of a three-part series, they use presentations, a short video, and primary and...