Moby Dick is more than a whale of a tale narrated by Ishmael. A lesson studying Herman Melville's classic novel asks readers to examine the different genres the author weaves into his story. Instructors model how to conduct a stylistic...

Compare and contrast folktales, myths, and fables in an interactive eBook. The interactive is broken up into three topics: myths, fables, and folktales. Each section includes a reading passage and a guided lesson on the theme, topic, and...

The theme of a work is not a single word! Rather it is a statement that reflects what a writer believes or wants readers to understand about a topic or subject. Here's a short, but powerful lesson that utilizes passages from The...

Work on literal and figurative meanings with a lesson focused on Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" and "The Road Not Taken." Readers identify the literary devices used by the poet to set the poems' themes, settings, and narrative...

Is there a connection? Scholars work to make connections between Myth of Cronus and The Key Elements of Mythology. First, they circle important words in the text and look for similarities. They then revisit the concept of theme and...

The Hunger Games. Maximum Ride. Why is so much of young adult literature so dark? What is the appeal of dystopian literature to young readers? The six activities in this resource ask kids to reflect on some of the reasons this genre has...

Does identity come from within, or do external forces shape it? Explore the complex identity concept with a two-unit module for 12th-grade language arts. The first unit uses A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and "A Daily Joy...

There is a reason why an Oscar is given each year for the Best Adaptation Screenplay. Adaptations are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare a work of literature with a least one adaptation of the work into a...

Can authors speak to each other across works, genres, and centuries? Study the conversation between Christopher Marlowe in his poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and the responses by Sir Walter Raleigh and William Carlos Williams...

The second module in a series for high school seniors focuses on tracking the central idea of a text across genres and from multiple author and character perspectives. Twelfth graders read a speech by Benazir Bhutto entitled "Ideas Live...

How can something be true even if it didn't happen? Invite your classes to investigate the truths found in the world of magical realism as they analyze short stories, poems, informational texts, video, and art from this genre.

Sharpen those pencils; it's time to write! Scholars begin writing the first body paragraph of their literary analysis essays. Additionally, pupils use graphic organizers to analyze a character's point of view from Laurence Yep's...

Body paragraphs are the building blocks of every essay. Pupils view and discuss a model essay using a rubric to evaluate one of its supporting paragraphs. Next, scholars use what they've learned to continue drafting their own literary...

Latin American culture is deeply embedded in American culture as a whole. From the Latin rock scene in San Francisco to the hip-hop world of New York, Latin American artists have influenced every genre of modern music. Learn about the...

How do writers use the interaction between elements like characterization and setting to create meaning? Readers of "A Worn Path" create a series of comic book-style graphics of Eudora Welty's short story and reflect on how Welty...

Read and incorporate a variety of Aesop's Fables into a fable genre study with an eBook produced by the Library of Congress. The interactive eBook contains 146 fables written by Aesop and includes colorful interactive illustrations...

Song lyrics, like poems, are meant to be heard. After examining the literary devices in several poems, scholars examine the lyrics of popular songs and identify the sound devices and the figurative language writers use to create the...

"X" is for exaggeration, and "F" is for fact. To encourage close reading and to improve literary analysis skills, class members annotate fables and tall tales, like Paul Bunyan, with symbols that identify key features of this genre.

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

Introduce class members to the conventions of the romance genre and the theme of familial relationships with Mahlon F. Craft's illustrated Sleeping Beauty. The themes are a focus of their study of The Winter's Tale.

Readers create a literary scrapbook for one of the characters in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and fill it with mementoes, journal entries, letters, etc. A great way to get kids to think about characterization.

One of the big challenges of assigning independent reading is helping class members find a book to read. Another is encouraging readers to read a variety of genres. Never fear, help is here in the form of a quest that asks individuals to...

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...

Expand your pupils' understanding of the short story genre with a study of John Updike and his story "A&P." This instructional activity, the fourth in a series of fourteen, invites learners to examine literary terms and read and...