Ninth graders read and analyze the William Shakespeare play "Romeo and Juliet" and compare it to the 1996 modern version of the play and the movie "West Side Story." They write an essay comparing and contrasting the three versions.

Examine the text structure of a memo with this worksheet. Eighth to twelfth graders decide if the purpose of a memo is to motivate an action or to provide information to the reader. They explore new vocabulary and make predictions prior...

What should readers do to prepare for reading an informational text? What should they do during their reading? What should they do after completing such a text? Introduce your pupils to reading strategies and techniques to gain meaning...

After completing S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, eighth graders compose a personal letter to their teacher detailing what they liked about the novel and the activities assigned during the course of the unit. A clever way to get feedback,...

Class members create a PowerPoint presentation showing artifacts they would include in a time capsule. The artifacts and explanations reflect personal hobbies, grooming choices, school life, etc. A great way for class members to...

A great resource for your unit on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Small groups conduct research about related topics (list included), write papers, present PowerPoint slide shows, and take a student-created test. Fill in a few...

Students describe how they feel in different situations. In this feelings lesson plan, students respond to questions asked by the teacher while reading the book The Way I Feel. They also use mirrors to show look at their own faces while...

Students discuss and write about different feelings they or someone else may have. In this feelings lesson plan, students discuss different ways they express their feelings. Then they get a picture with someone who is demonstrating a...

Explore websites, complete research, and use technological tools to create a final multimedia presentation on what makes a community special. Learners of all ages work with a partner to research an interesting aspect of their community,...

Fun awaits both you and your class as you embark on a musical activity. After discussing different rhythmic meters they choose a poem to set to music. The poem must rhyme and be set to a melody in the key of C Major. Because the activity...

"O pun" the door on this activity. Have your pupils compare the puns and word play in scenes from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to those in Gary Blackwood’s The Shakespeare Stealer. Warm up and introductory activities, as well as...

A reading of Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County not only offers pupils an opportunity to practice their listening skills but also provides them with examples of dialectic speech. This is the gol’derndest lesson...

Learners explore social justice, the civil rights movement, and everyday heroes. They view video clips, learn about James Armstrong: The Barber of Birmingham, and create their own hero wall. They present their walls to the class and...

What do Roger Chillingworth, Dr. Heidegger, and Ethan Brand have in common? They are all American literature poster boys for Romanticism, advertising the dangers of valuing reason over feeling and intuition. Introduce your class to...

As Nick wanders the grounds of Gatsby's mansion, he observes the behaviors of the rowdy guests and listens to the music pouring over the lawn. Bring the music of the jazz age into the classroom with Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues,"...

Dr. Seuss's ABC Book is used to help young readers distinguish between the letters of the alphabet and their letter sounds. After a discussion reviewing the letters that are vowels and consonants, the book is read to the class. Then, the...

Enhance and extend instruction of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin with one or all of these ideas. You might want to cover characterization and summary, or improve understanding of context clues and irony. You can cover any...

Eliminate all doubt when it comes to sentence structure with nine thorough lesson plans. Whether you want your young writers to vary their sentence structure or shore up their knowledge of conjunctions and semicolons, these lessons are a...

The phonemic awareness activities in this packet are designed to help kids develop skills in rhyming, syllabication, blending onsets and rimes, and beginning and ending sounds. Well worth a place in your curriculum library.

With the help from learning games and holiday-themed coloring pages, scholars learn the importance of listening carefully and following directions. Coloring pages celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. Learning games include...

Even those experienced teachers of Hamlet can find much to like in a guide that offers many fresh ideas for activities. Class members may take on the role of FBI profilers that investigate Claudius and Hamlet as murderers, or...

Good books are accessible through a variety of literary lenses. To consider how the same story can be seen in different lights, groups develop a storyboard for a movie teaser that would focus on one of six concepts found in Suzanne...

Sixth graders create a slide show presentation of a popular children's storybook. The story will be retold by the "villain" in an effort to explain his side of the story. This activity is based on "The True Story of The Three Little...

Young scholars engage in this, the third in a three-part series on ships. The overall lesson series is designed to allow students to extend their understanding of floating, sinking, density, and buoyancy and apply it to the design and...