Using or considering using Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God? Then this packet is a must for your curriculum library. The examination of how Hurston combines folklore and folk language to create the voice of her...

Was nonviolent resistance the best means of securing civil rights for black Americans in the 1960s? In this highly engaging and informative lesson, your young historians will closely analyze several key documents from the civil rights...

The courage of Las Mariposas, the Mirabal sisters, is the focus of a series of activities designed to accompany a reading of In the Time of the Butterflies that ask readers to consider what it means to be courageous. Beautifully crafted...

Here’s a must-have resource for anyone using The Grapes of Wrath. Everything from guiding questions to background information, from photographs to documentary films, from activities to assessments is included in a richly detailed packet...

To examine the “New English” Chinua Achebe uses in Things Fall Apart, readers complete a series of worksheets that ask them to examine similes, proverbs, and African folktales contained in the novel. Individuals explain the meaning...

“So I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us.” Our Town is used as the text in a Common Core exemplar that examines the dramatic and...

Readers of Solomon Northup's brutally frank slave narrative Twelve Years a Slave examine passages that support the argument that slavery "undermined and corrupted" the institution of marriage. Background information is...

Here's a must-have resource for anyone reading To Kill A Mockingbird or using Harper Lee's award-winning novel in a classroom. The packet contains Miss Hollace Ransdall's first-hand, factual account of the trials of the Scottsboro Boys,...

Introduce your class to ekphrastic poetry with an exercise that asks them to examine Edward Hooper's painting House by the Railroad and Edward Hirsch's poem "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad." After a close reading...

What was the most beneficial policy for nineteenth-century African Americans: to stay in the United States and work for freedom, or to immigrate to a new place and build a society elsewhere? Your young historians will construct an...

When in the course of a course on historic American events, it becomes necessary for learners to examine, with decent respect, the Declaration of Independence, it becomes evident that there are six separate and equal parts of that...

To gain an understanding of the significance of Galileo Galilei's revolutionary ideas, class members watch the short video "Stargazing Before Galileo," and conduct a close reading of Galileo's Sidereal Messsenger. They then...

Lois Weber has been forgotten. So have Dorothy Davenport Reid, Gene Gauntier, and many others. High school sleuths use advanced search engines to investigate these women and discover clues to their disappearance from filmography and...

Students analyze the Gwendolyn Brooks use of enjambment in her poem "We Real Cool." In this poetry analysis activity, students define common poetic devices and the examples of enjambment in the poem. Students discuss the poem and write...

Fix the Articles of Confederation or develop a new constitution? That was the question facing the Founding Fathers. Several of those in favor of a new constitution published a series of essays, collected in the Federalist...

Middle schoolers work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail. Working in groups, they write a scene for the movie that is historically accurate and based on the...

Learners discover how Shakespeare's play interprets Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge, as reflected in the structure of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy, one of the most popular forms of drama of that era. Students perform certain...

Young scholars critically examine the relationship of man and nature in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." students examine the third person point of view and conduct in-depth character analysis.

High schoolers examine how Robert Hayden and Theodore Roethke incorporate poetic devices to convey meaning in the poems, 'Those Winter Sundays,' and 'My Papa's Waltz.' They listen to audio clips, explore websites, and write an analysis...

High schoolers read and analyze Jessie Benton Fremont's travelogue of her trip out west in 1849 to identify the gender roles, social attitudes and class distinctions of the time. They then adapt the the travelogue into a film script.

A passage from Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome provides the text for an assessment that asks readers to use evidence from the excerpt to decide if Ethan is a victim of his social and physical environment, or of his own personal choices and...

After reading a series of primary source documents detailing the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, class members craft newspaper columns assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each man's vision, and present their...

Learners explore historical connections, talking with family members about landmark events they have witnessed in their lifetimes to explore how history touches our lives. They identify several landmark events of the late 20th century.

Young scholars study the literature and literary techniques of the early Middle Ages, thus preparing students to read Beowulf with an appreciation for its artistry and beauty. Young scholars solve online riddles, write riddles and study...