The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

The opening chapters of Mark Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, can be daunting for some readers. A reader's theater assignment divides the second chapter of the novel into a seven-role script, allowing...

Is Steve Harmon innocent or guilty? Examine the evidence with a learning exercise based on Monster by Walter Dean Myers. As kids read the book, they note particular passages that they believe indicate whether or not Steve committed...

How can a screenplay create meaning and drama in ways that other forms of writing cannot? That is the question class members must answer as they compare the cantina scene of the screenplay for George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope...

The Scarlet Letter may be a classic, but keeping high schoolers engaged in the reading of Hawthorne's vocabulary, syntax, imagery, and historical references presents it own set of challenges. Here's a guide that offers readers...

Build reading fluency and classroom community with a Reader’s Theater activity. Class groups select a myth, or if part of a myth writing unit, select a group member’s myth, craft a script, and perform for the class. Directions for...

O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is the classic example of irony in literature. Teach young writers about the ways irony can engage their readers with an activity in which they write scripts using dramatic irony, situational irony, and...

Explore the sounds, importance, and effectiveness of dialect in literature.  Active participants read, listen to poetry, and explore dialect by developing a formal definition, discuss the benefits of its use, complete a Venn diagram...