The second lesson of a pair about Paul Laurence Dunbar, this plan focuses in particular on his poem, "We Wear the Masks." After a short historical introduction, class members conduct a series or readings, marking up the text and...

Poetic language is abundant in Natalie Babbitt's beautiful novel, Tuck Everlasting. Learners note the examples of similes, metaphors, and personification they find as they read, and illustrate how the language creates a sensory...

A shirt can't really swallow you—right? Readers find examples of symbolism and personification in S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders with two straightforward lessons.

A read-aloud anthology focuses on fables. Over three weeks, first graders listen to various stories and then participate in lessons that cover story elements, including plot, characters, setting, and personification and explore...

Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...

Lead your class through a writing exercise that explores personification. After listening to the teacher read a poem that personifies the sky, they go step by step through the writing their own personification poems.

Young writers hunt for examples of figurative language in their reading. The hunt requires pupils to cite  their sources, record a quoted example for each type of figurative language, and an explanation of what they think the...

Whether you need resources for reading comprehension, literary analysis, phonics, vocabulary, or text features, an extensive packet of worksheets is sure to fit your needs. Based on a fifth-grade curriculum but applicable to any level of...

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...

Discover lyric poetry through a reading of Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and analyze its meaning with three short-answer questions covering symbolism, personification, alliteration, metaphors, and similes. 

A 15-page packet details three activities designed to engage scholars in Homer's The Odyssey. As they read, pupils use a graphic organizer to record examples of several literary terms found in The Odyssey and contemporary...

A study of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If," launches a lesson about theme. Class members read Kipling's poem and poems by other seventh graders to identify the themes.

Your clever kindergartners will enjoy a series of activities based on the West African folktale, The Clever Monkey, adapted by Rob Cleveland. They sequence the story with pictures, copy sentences, illustrate idioms about cats,...

Every neighborhood has its own unique cast of characters, and the crew in the novel Hello Universe is no exception. The characters in Erin Entrada Kelly's novel take center stage in a study guide based on the text....