Great for a reading intervention or remedial Language Arts class, this lesson uses two stories from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III ("Terri Jackson" and "Mary Lou" to reinforce note-taking skills, story elements, and comparing and...

Something wickedly wonderful this way comes in a lesson that focuses on Macbeth. After a close reading of the play, class members craft a literary analysis essay in which they use evidence from the text to show how Shakespeare uses the...

Give grammar instruction a boost with a basketball-themed game all about analogies! Working in pairs, learners quiz each other's analogy knowledge testing how many they can complete and earn the most points.

Scholars complete their study of the collective fear in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" by conducting a mock trial to determine how many witches are in the class. Groups then analyze sections of the play for the literary devices used and...

Introduce your class to literary analysis with a series of activities that has them examine book and movie reviews. Groups then draft their own review of a text, select a digital medium, and craft a presentation.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the most frequently cited novel for the Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Open Response Question. Those new to using the book and and veterans as well will find the teaching strategies, the...

Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou are featured in a guided inquiry unit. High schoolers research the lives and works of these and other Black women writers and craft an argument, using evidence from their research, to...

Introduce your high school scholars as to how to use counterclaims in argument writing. Learners explore this skill with collaborative efforts and technology. Together they explore the pros and cons of homework and develop a thesis for...

Are video games sports? Pupils investigate this question as well as various nonfiction selections to learn more about claims and the support that defines them. All of the selections mimic the rigor on state tests and encourage close...

How was Edgar Allan Poe able to create "intriguing, memorable, and lasting literature"? To answer this question, learners analyze the syntax, diction, and characterizations in Poe's poems and short stories and compare the impact of these...

Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...

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...

Who can grow the best crystals? Challenge class members to develop strategies for enhancing growth in the crystals. Through a lab investigation, learners study the properties of crystals and test the effectiveness of different...

Fourth and fifth graders define the term media literacy, then come up with examples that they share with the class. The types of media studied are auditory, visual, and written. Learners get together in pairs and perform a media...

Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson poetry unit.

The danger of mob mentality is on display in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Get your class thinking with some challenging quickwrite questions, then assign characters from the play to be read aloud altogether. Links to worksheets...

Young historians discover the early people of the western hemisphere. The unit explores how the land changed, how it was used and homes of early Americans such as Incas, Mayans, Inuits, Aztecs, and Pueblos. Individuals also examine these...

How did the founding of the American colonies lead to a revolution? Use the essential question and sample activities to guide learners through a series of history lessons. Additionally, the packet includes effective strategies to...

Sometimes it's all too easy to slip into informal language, ya know? Help your class master code-switching with the activity and drill provided here. The activity is a literature discussion where formal language is required. The...