To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then...

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...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

You could spend a full day discussing The Phantom of the Opera and not scratch the surface, but a set of lessons about the literary elements and themes of the musical production is a great start. Young thespians build upon the...

You've got your topic—now how do you make your poem funny? Explore ways to make a poem humorous, including puns, exaggeration, silly words, and surprising endings, with a helpful poetry lesson.

Academics take turns as actors in an engaging poetry cafe. Elementary learners work in small groups to create original poems or stories addressing community issues and read their work in front of a live audience. Scholars also reflect...

Learners follow five steps to compose an alliteration poem. They choose one consonant and brainstorm as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives they can think of to create rhyming sentences that come together in a poetic fashion. 

Address the literary elements in a piece of writing using these materials. The packet includes plenty of resources, and focuses mainly on theme, character, and point of view, with some materials for setting, symbolism, and author's...

Imagine an interactive that teaches young poets all the essential elements of poetry. This colorful resource does just that. Players are introduced to rhythm, meter, and rhyme schemes using famous poems. They practice marking the...

A study guide for Native Gardens, a dramatic play, introduces theater lovers to a set of a neighbors and the problems they face. Discussion questions in the guide tackle themes of racism, ageism, and classism.

To appreciate the value of seeing and hearing a poetry performance, groups prepare readings of selected poems and then compare and critique their interpretations and videotaped versions of the same poem. Included in the resource are...

Riddle me this! What do kennings, caesura, and alliteration have to do with the Nowell Codex? Introduce class members to Anglo-Saxon poetry and prepare readers for a study of Beowulf with a series of activities that...

How does poetry differ from other forms of writing? Class members view two writing samples, decide which one is a poem, and then identify the criteria they used to distinguish between the two samples.  

Determine what young pupils already know about earth science with a brainstorming activity. After class members work together to complete a KWL chart about the Earth, they craft an acrostic poem to demonstrate their understanding.

Poetic language is abundant in Natalie Babbitt's beautiful novel, Tuck Everlasting. Learners note the examples of similes, metaphors, and personification they find as they read, and illustrate how the language creates a sensory...

The Harlem Renaissance brought forth many American art forms including jazz, and the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Using a carefully curated set of documents from the Library of Congress, pupils see the cultural...

Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...

Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

Use this resource's pairings of classical literature and paintings to practice the skill of comparing different artistic mediums with your ELA class. Addressing standard 7 for literature in the Common Core, the resource encourages your...

Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...

A silk rank badge was a symbolic emblem worn by high officials during the Qing Dynasty. Your class will get a chance to examine the details, symbolism, color, and design of such a badge as they make their own symbolic trading cards....

Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...

How do you assess what your pupils have learned over the course of the year? Find out how competent they are at reading and analyzing age-level literature with the ideas presented here. Included in this resource are two suggested...