Who are "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”? Readers of Gulliver’s Travels will learn the answer, as the journey with Lemuel Gulliver to Lilliput,...

Chapter six of In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez's historical novel about the Mirabal sisters, is the focus of a activity that asks readers to define a list of vocabulary words and respond to a series of comprehension...

After a close reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" individuals copy the rhythm and rhyme scheme and rewrite the final stanzas of the poem.

Sudents compare specific excerpts from The Red Badge of Courage to first-hand accounts of Civil War battles, in text and images and list elements of Crane's style in The Red Badge of Courage that contribute to its realism.

Practice expository and creative writing with your class. Pupils use magazines to find pictures, cut them out, and create a collage. This work of art is then used as a writing prompt. They describe the collage in either a creative or...

Use short stories to teach English? Yes! Designed as a professional development opportunity for English language teachers, the ideas in this booklet can easily be adapted to advanced ESL/ELL classes.

Learners examine the Japanese writing form of Haibun. They identify the elements of Japanese prose and poetry, analyze a haibun for writing devices, complete a graphic organizer, and compose an original haibun as a form of journal keeping.

Have your class analyze the narrative art in quilts. They identify elements in this domestic art and the stories they tell. They define a story quilt, view an example, and analyze the work of Harriet Power. This is a great lesson to...

Explore the possibilities of buildings, public spaces, and architectural design. Learners examine the work of SANAA architects Sejima & Nishizawa through background information, images, and guided class discussion. This lesson...

Identifying conflict is important, but how do you handle conflict when it comes? Students use a plot mountain to graph two role-play scenarios about interpersonal conflicts.

Students explore the symmetry and balance in the composition of a variety of art works and note how the viewer's eye is guided to the important components of the image. How these elements affect the tone of the painting and communicate...

It's time for a celebration! Scholars go on a gallery walk around the classroom to view their peers' completed illustrated children's stories. Using sticky notes, pupils provide feedback about the powerful elements they find in their...

"A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come."  The withered and wild witches of Shakespeare’s Scottish play launch an examination of the fantastical elements in Act I, scene iii, paying particular attention to the action, imagery,...

Students write their own fables. For this writing fables lesson, students use handheld computers to write a fable. The class designs a spreadsheet to organize common elements of fables. Students also edit each others' work.

Middle schoolers identify elements of myths, fables, and legends as they read an example of each.  After reading an example of each type of story, they list elements from each.  They compare and contrast these features by...

Help your secondary reader/writers assess texts by studying press releases from Statistics Canada and drafting articles based on them. They then compare the press release, their own articles, and actual news stories they find online. I'd...

High school writers will benefit from learning the basic elements of analytical and argumentative research before completing their first research project. If you're looking to provide more guidance to your learners, pause at certain...

The blank page can be a huge hurdle to overcome when writing a poem. Take that hurdle away with an interactive format that enables pupils to write elegant diamante poems. After they add the first and last words in two separate fields,...

Explication may sound like a fancy word, but it's just a fancy way to say analysis. Using a handout on poetry explications, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers learn how to break down and analyze a poem. The...

Home in on the quote on this page to explore setting, the author's and character's voices, and plot in Willa Cather's My Antonia. Pupils draw a picture of what is described in the quote, discuss the content, and make connections to their...

Learners study the elements of folktales. They write, perform and produce their own African folktales using camcorders and movie software.

Here is a terrific instructional activity on poetry! Learners bring in the lyrics to their favorite song. A class discussion ensues regarding what makes a song "catchy." After analyzing the alliteration of the poems, learners read the...

High schoolers examine the New York Times review of the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and explore the elements of scriptwriting. They read the article about the film adaptation screenplay and examine a...

Bully, bullied, or bystander? Paul Langan's The Bully is the anchor text in a unit that examines bullying and violence. After a close reading of the text, readers imagine themselves as the characters and consider how they would react in...