Celebrate and honor Native American culture with this set of graphic organizers that showcases literature like The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and A Boy Called Slow as well as three other Native American literature books. Learners compare...

A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...

Study the transformation of American literature starting from Colonial times up until the present. Each of the nine periods (Romanticism, Realism, Postmodernism, etc.) is introduced and important literary agents from that period are...

Read excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "American Scholar" to address and analyze passages from American literary works. Seniors will discuss three quotations from the text and read excerpts from the address. They then work in...

Here is a complex lesson plan that interweaves the history of the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration with the study of poetry, art, and blues music from the Harlem Renaissance. The plan helps young historians develop a deep...

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

To begin this instructional activity, the instructor will present a PowerPoint detailing the genres of Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. Learners will follow along with an instructional sheet that will aid in the identification of...

Practice grade-level reading comprehension with this lesson, in which middle schoolers read different examples of Native American literature. They discover different cultures while examining their own, and answer questions related to the...

Students match American Literature authors with their short stories, poems, and books. In this American Literature lesson, students are given an overview of the authors and their main works. Then students independently do a matching...

Use this presentation about Thomas Paine's The American Crisis series to guide any number of assignments. The slides provide instructions for a literary terms assignment, an open response journal entry, two research writing projects, and...

Analyze the depth and beauty of American Literature by reading Emily Dickinson's letters and poems. The class analyzes Dickinson's poetic style and discusses Thomas Wentworth Higginson's editorial relationship with Dickinson. They pay...

Eleventh graders ponder about what it means to be an "American." They discuss the impact of an author's word choice and sentence structure on text. They identify some major themes and development of the Letters... Compose paragraphs and...

The four major trends of the 18th century (The Enlightenment, the Great Awakening, British global ambitions, and economic disagreements) are the focus of a PowerPoint that places in context such influences as deism, mercantilism,...

How much do you know about Latin American music? A crossword puzzle challenges learners to answer 24 questions about the history, genres, performers, and instruments of Latin American music.

Explore transcendentalism through American literature. Learners examine the setting of Henry David Thoreau's Walden through a series of excerpts and photographs. This lesson includes a review that discusses the pros and cons of its...

Alice Walker discusses the influence the strong women in her family and her experiences growing up on a plantation in Eatonton, Georgia had on her writing. Part of the American Masters series, the short video includes images of her...

Explore the life and writing of John Steinbeck. A 48-slide presentation introduces the famous American author, his California heritage, and his impressive collection of published work. Viewers are then introduced to Of Mice and Men, one...

Explore the life and works of the famous American author, Ernest Hemingway. Middle and high schoolers gain appreciation for the author through this Webquest, detailing his time in Michigan, Paris, Africa, and Cuba. Consider using this...

Introduce your class to the writing of the indigenous Americans and, even more well known, their story telling. An engaging presentation describes what kinds of texts would be included in the oral stories performed and some common themes...

Students read a collection of stories and watch videos to learn about the Jewish assimilation in American literature. In this American literature lesson, students watch videos about Judaism, read stories from a contemporary Jewish...

Examine the contributions of African-Americans in the worlds of art and literature. Over the course of a few days, young scholars will read and analyze a poem, a short story, and a piece of art. They complete a range of...

Groups of high school learners conduct research on a particular era of African-American history, focusing on events, people, and places important to that era. Next, they review children's literature in four different genres. As a...

Identify text features, make inferences, and discover the cultural significance of Native American Poetry. Sixth graders read several Native American poems and use graphic organizers and literature response logs to record their feelings...