The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...

Musicals have been adapted from stage plays, novels, and movies. With The Lion King, Disney transforms its animated film into show-stopping, live-action musical theatre. The guide Disney provides to accompany a study...

How is music a form of therapy? Scholars explore the topic using the fourth and final instructional activity from the Changing One's Tune: A Music Therapy STEM series. Learners explore the relationship between music and the mind and...

Jazz and the City, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz and Gender, Jazz and Literature, Jazz and the Arts, Jazz and Film. Here's a packet of unit plans organized around themes that reflect American culture. Each unit examines how...

Aladdin, Disney's Broadway musical comedy, is a magic carpet ride. Prepare your class for a field trip to the show with a study guide that is a treasure trove of activities, cultural connections, and background information.

Introduce young explorers to the music and history of Jamaican culture through game songs and dances. As a bonus, class members get to play simple songs transcribed for the recorder.

How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...

While music lyrics are often used to teach literary elements, the richness of this resource comes from the wealth of exercises, activities, and support materials provided in the packet.  Although designed for gifted learners, the...

Marc Chagall's painting Romeo and Juliet and Baz Lurhmann's film of the same scene in Romeo + Juliet allow class members to analyze how artists consider the same subject in different media.

Are your classes weary of dreary worksheets? Are the learners nearly napping? Thrill them, fill them with delight with an interactive worksheet that asks them to identify the figurative language Edgar Allen Poe uses to add horror and...

I am dancing to the music in my head. Scholars learn to listen for music in their heads as they read literature and poems. After they identify and analyze poetic devices that relate to music, they create their own musical poems.

Is your head beating as if it would break into twenty pieces looking for activities to accompany a reading of the woeful tale of Juliet and her Romeo? Here's a weighty tool kit that won't hurt your back. The packet is divided into 20...

What do Lady Gaga and Dame Edith Sitwell have in common? As they examine Sitwell's poetry, class members learn that the similarities are far more than their unique appearance.

Did you know that Vivaldi’s orchestra was largely made up of girls from an orphanage? Fun facts like this fill a 34-page teacher's kit designed to accompany a cross-curricular study of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. 

Two lessons focus on making a beat. Using popular African American music of its time, scholars listen and analyze the rhythm then recreate it with hands drums, and cups. 

Smart Solutions is the theme of a unit created to meet the needs of English language earners. Through a series of lessons, scholars follow a routine—move, speak, and listen— to cover topics including stores, shops, celebrations, pets,...

English language development lessons are brought to you in poems, picture cards, and grand discussions in a We Can Do It! themed unit. Topics of discussion include daily challenges, parts of a whole, words that describe what we...

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...

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...

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.

Learners follow five steps to compose an alliteration poem. They choose one consonant and brainstorm as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives they can think of to create rhyming sentences that come together in a poetic fashion. 

Accompany the African folktale, Anansi the Spider, with a collection of five lessons, each equipped with supplemental activities. Lessons offer multidisciplinary reinforcement in English language arts, social studies, science,...

In a time of fake news, media manipulation, and Internet trolls, a resource equips learners with the tools they need to recognize and combat resources that are designed to appeal to our cognitive biases. Introduce learners to five...

Twelve categories of verbs exist in the future tense, ranging from simple present to future perfect progressive, but only three have a place in academic writing. Those three tenses make up the content of an informational handout that...