Words carry baggage. In addition to their literal, denotative meaning, words also carry the weight of the associations and connotations attached to the word—the connotations of words writers use to create the tone of a piece. An...

Find out how much your class knows about literary elements with a quick pre-assessment. Pupils work first individually to identify the instances of personification, metaphor, simile, and more, and then with group members to...

What does the author believe about his topic? Why did he write in the first place? Challenge your class to figure out the answers to these questions as they read through informational texts. The resource provides a breakdown of the...

Enrich a unit on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros with a selection of related activities. The packet contains nine activities that go from pre-reading through wrapping up the novel. Young readers work on studying...

A 12-piece primary source packet sets the tone for a study of the role women played in the origins, development, and impact of blues music. Legends like Bessie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Ida Cox are featured, as are...

Imagine a list that includes Alan Abelson of Baron's, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and Mother Jones. High schoolers select a national columnist, read and annotate five columns by this author, noting the rhetorical...

Mini microbiologists play a card game in which they group microorganisms by groups: virus, fungus, protist, or bacteria. Then they identify the roles different microbes play in the natural world and explore how humans effectively use...

The key idea in this interactive exercise designed for high schoolers is that figurative language, especially similes, and metaphors, add layers of meaning to a text. Users examine examples from speeches, ads, movie dialogue, and poems,...

The brutality of Bloody Sunday—when non-violent protesters who supported voting rights for African Americans were beaten by police—captured a nation. Young historians examine the letter of one horrified American to Congress to consider...

Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lesson planed by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue...

What a great idea for celebrating Women's History Month and discovering the amazing efforts that individuals have put forth on behalf of women's rights! Learners take a closer look at the speeches and other primary source documents of...

Designed to be used with an independent reading book, this activity provides practice with identifying and explaining literary terms. While they read, individuals find instances of literary devices and elements in use in their books....

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

Looking for a project list to conclude a study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? The six suggestions included in the menu (a song, thematic box, CD case, book jacket, blog, scene) could be assigned to individuals or groups....

It ‘s assessment check list time, and you have nothing to prove that your learners mastered the skill RL.11-12.6. Rest assured, here is a plan that is sure to appease your administrator. It offers solid examples on the difference...

React to chapter thirty from A Lesson Before Dying to explore the author's purpose and tone.

This is the thirteenth article in a series that was developed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how good descriptions aren't necessarily connected with a lot of words, good descriptions are clean and to the point.