"What are feelings?" and "Why are feelings important to understand?" are the essential questions of a lesson that boosts self-awareness. Scholars discuss the four basic emotions—happy, sad, scared, and mad—in preparation...

What happens when a tenuous grasp on sanity begins to slip? Compare Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain" with a lesson plan focused on developing a common central idea. High...

How do complex characters develop throughout a text? Pupils read Act 5.1 from Shakespeare's Macbeth, which depicts Lady Macbeth's descent into madness. Using discussion and writing exercises, scholars analyze how Shakespeare develops...

Revenge, mortality, madness—what are the central ideas from Shakespeare's Hamlet? Scholars answer the question by writing multi-paragraph responses. They also identify and discuss literary devices from the play.

Though this assignment may be thought madness, there is an actual method. Scholars perform a close reading of the original text of the soliloquies in Hamlet and modern translations to ensure they understand the speeches. They then select...

Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...

Make up your mind to complete a lesson plan about "The Tell-Tale Heart" and forever rid yourself of simple sentence structures. As ninth graders analyze the first two paragraphs of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, they consider how text...

Eager readers have waited a long time, very patiently, for a set of literary analysis lessons that connect text structure to the work's central idea. As ninth graders continue reading "The Tell-Tale Heart," they focus on the central...

An engaging unit connects Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson's shared themes of madness and departure from reality. The 10th lesson in the unit explores Dickinson's figurative language and structure choices in "I Felt a Funeral, in my...

Hearken! and observe how well a literary analysis unit can help ninth graders read closely and connect text structure to a central idea. Focusing on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," learners take notes and track the development...

Madness, violence, despair—the titular character of Shakespeare's Macbeth is spiraling out of control. Pupils first explore the topic with a collaborative jigsaw discussion. At the end of the instructional activity, they write about how...

There's a fine line between madness and genius. Using the resource, scholars complete a mid-unit assessment based on their study of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. They write a multi-paragraph response, analyzing how two central...

Encourage self-awareness with a instructional activity that challenges scholars to identify feelings—happy, sad, mad, and scared. Using a feelings thermometer, similar to that of a bar graph, pupils discuss how they would feel in...

Encourage scholars to express themselves with help from an engaging song. Sung to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down," participants sing phrases that offer tips for dealing with emotions—sad, happy, worried, proud, mad, and...

A pet can offer comfort, friendship, and loyalty in the most stressful of situations. Here is a lesson plan that explores the important role animals played during the Civil War. Class members read informative texts, complete a...

Encourage readers to determine if Hamlet's madness is actually divinest sense. Class members analyze the words of the play before studying related texts, including T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," scenes from...

Ease children's back-to-school jitters with this primary grade lesson based on the book The Kissing Hand by Ruth E. Harper. Starting off with a singing of the song "I Wish I Had a Little Red Box", children go on to discuss and...

Ads here, ads there, ads everywhere—but what do they communicate? Pupils discuss this topic and develop a list of personal values. They then work as creative directors at an advertising firm to create billboards that reflect community...

World War I propaganda techniques employed by the United States government are the focus of this lesson plan. The resource includes an excellent handout of propaganda techniques, ranging from appealing to authority to repetition, lying,...

Adolescence is a tumultuous time for the learners in your class. Guide them through the rocky world of friendships, risks, personal health, and emotional turmoil with a set of lessons about teenager relationships and sexuality.

"Let the hunt begin!" As an introduction to synonyms, second graders generate a list of word pairs that have similar meanings. The words pairs are written on sentence strips, cut apart, shuffled, and distributed to class members who must...

Here is the comprehensive, official educator's guide for presenting Hotel Rwanda and the story of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 to a classroom environment. It includes a range of exceptional hands-on or discussion activities, as well...

Your learners will practice many ways of describing data using coordinate algebra in this unit written to address many Common Core State Standards. Simple examples of different ways to organize data are shared and then practice problems...