Are your students having trouble choosing the right words to communicate their point? Learners view a presentation that explore active and passive voice, redundancy, and diction through examples and definitions.

What is the difference between accept and except? Affect and effect? Brilliantly advise your class with the advice in these slides. Definitions of commonly misused words from A-Z help clarify meaning and usage.

Seriously, 93 slides of literary terms? Yes, and well worth the time, although perhaps not all at once. The beauty here is in the concise, easy-to-understand definitions for such well-known terms as imagery and personification, as well...

Prepare your learners to identify figurative language in poetry. Tips for reading poetry and what to look for are listed on these slides. Rhetorical devices are defined and plenty of examples are given. 

What is the author trying to achieve? What strategies does he/she use to meet this goal? How affective are these strategies? These three questions, the heart of rhetorical analysis, are examined in a presentation that also details...

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...

It's all well and good when you're asked to identify a speaker's tone using his or her body language, facial expression, and pitch and emphasis. Identifying the tone of a written passage is another challenge entirely. Check out an...

Developing a distinctive voice is a challenge all writers face. Here’s a presentation that defines the parts of voice (attitude, syntax, diction) and then asks viewers to engage in a series of activities designed to model how to develop...

Introducing or need to review literary devices and terms for a study of poetry? Though text heavy, the explanations and examples of key poetic devices will provide learners with the vocabulary they need to discuss and craft poems.

Verbs are the center of attention in this resource. Students discover that a verb shows action, then they consider twenty sentences that each have an action verb. Students must click on one of three words at the bottom of each slide in...

Homophones take center stage in this engaging, interactive slide show. Students see that homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. They consider 20 slides which have sentences with...

In this entertaining presentation, middle school students consider a variety of ways to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate words and expressions by looking at context clues. After going over some strategies, students take...

Learning about antonyms can help learners build a diverse vocabulary and better understand word meaning and choice. They work through eight different sentences by determining which words are antonyms. This nicely designed presentation...

Although this presentation does not have a clear purpose, it could be used as a reading, vocabulary, or poetry exploration. The presentation focuses on three poems, one of them by Edgar Allan Poe. Furthermore, it could be used as a...

Students are introduced to "sparkle words," which are really adjectives! They consider ten sentences which have a word missing, and choose the best of the three sparkle words on the slide to complete the sentence. A nice, motivating...

Ziggurats, cuneiform writing, the Tower of Babel, hieroglyphics, pyramids, the Great Wall. Launch a unit on ancient cultures, with a presentation that introduces viewers to ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Sumer, Egypt, Indus, and China....

"It was a dark and stormy night. Perfect for making Christmas cookies." Distinguishing between the mood of a piece and the tone can be tricky, but with the help of this presentation viewers quickly see and are able to identify the...

A free press is entitled to its opinions. While the news pages report the facts of events, editorial pages feature writers' and cartoonists' opinions about events to either directly or indirectly persuade. Introduce viewers to the art of...

Sophomores record the definitions and examples of a series of literary terms and then create their own example of the word. Designed as an assessment, the presentation could also be used as an introduction or as a review. 

The format of a formal paper, according to the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style Guide, is the focus of a text-heavy presentation that cites the rules but offers few examples. Consider adding additional slides or including a...

Slideshow explores the connection between word choice and the author's tone.

Learn about using context clues to find the most appropriate word choice in a specific context. Practice identifying correct word choices in questions that could be found on standardized tests.

A slideshow introducing the topic of word choice and discussing its importance.

This lessons introduces cliches and discusses their use.