Curated OER
Scrambled Stories II
Review story elements with your class. They will use examples from a story to develop critical-thinking questions. Then they use a graphic organizer to describe the setting, character, and plot of the story, focusing on how they...
Curated OER
Grammar On The Go
Help your learners understand the parts of speech with this color-coding activity. While reading a short passage, readers circle the nouns with blue, the verbs with red, and the adjectives with green. When they are done, scholars list...
Curated OER
Convince that Jury (Inspired by Roald Dahl's
What happened to a murder case when the police eat the murder weapon? After reading Roald Dahl's dark and ironic short story "Lamb to the Slaughter," students write a persuasive essay to convince a jury that the wife who killed her...
Curated OER
Reading Study Guide: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Meant for use with Maya Angelou's first autobiographical volume I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the materials here are designed for a homeschool setting, but they'd suit any classroom or text. Graphic organizers, chapter summary...
Curated OER
Valentine's Day: Love Letters
Oh the joys of love! As a special Valentine's Day assignment, budding authors research the life of one of the most romantic poets, Keats. They read the letter, "To Fanny Brawne, 13 October 1819," then compose a love letter of their own....
Curated OER
Three Level Questions: Parrot in the Oven
Helpful for any reading comprehension lesson, this worksheet focuses on Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven. It contains three levels of questions: Right There (comprehension-level questions), Think and Search (questions you need...
Curated OER
Scumbelina
This cute and new imagining of the old tale of Cinderella comes complete with a beginning, middle, and end, audio, and comprehension questions. Learners will read along as you progress through each slide, then answer several questions at...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 13: Character Interviews on NaNoTV
Kids love to pretend. Use this imaginative energy to develop their understanding of characterization. Class members dress up as a character from their novel-writing project and sit for a filmed interview. In responding to questions about...
Curated OER
Time Travel Advertisement
What makes an effective advertisement? Read the advertisement for the Time Machine 3000, and discuss the format and heading with your class. A short series of questions help middle schoolers analyze this advertisement before they write...
Great Schools
Different Types of Writing
What type of writing is this? Learners read a brief introduction to various types of text: instructions, explanations, poems, folk tales, novels, informative, and arguments. The introduction doesn't explain these, so...
Curated OER
Measure for Measure: Anticipation Guide
Be bold and never fearful! Tempt your scholars with an Anticipation Guide for Measure for Measure. Before reading Shakespeare’s problem play, class members label a series of statements as either true or false in their opinion. (It’s okay...
Curated OER
Prewriting, Using Pictures
Young readers practice getting information from both the text and the illustrations found in books they are reading. They see that quite often, authors use pictures to help them get their writing process started. Youngsters are invited...
EngageNY
Close Reading: Unpacking Specific Articles of the UDHR
Lesson 6 of this extensive unit finally has your class begin to work their way through specific articles from the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Before examining the rights actually detailed in the...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Characters
Are your learners only talking about the plot of the story and not the richness of the characters? Then show them how important characters are to literature with the information available here. The learner will know how authors create...
Schools Linking Network & Lifeworlds Learning
How Do We All Live Together?
Explore the concepts of community and point of view with these activities complementing the children's book Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Following a class reading of the story, ask students to either draw a map of the...
Curated OER
Handout for "Tell-Tale Heart"
Looking for some additional materials for Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"? Included in a 14-page packet are an anticipation guide, a vocabulary list, exercise, and quiz, a list of literary terms, and an essay assignment with pre-writing...
K12 Reader
Character Analysis in the Red Badge of Courage
As part of a comprehension exercise, readers analyze the character of Henry Fielding and consider how his romantic view of himself, and of war, changes.
Curated OER
HS 204: Introduction to Literature: Poetry Section
This outline introduction for a college course covers the idea of humanities and various language forms and literature genres. Beginning with the human species and our influence on the world around us, take a very thorough look at the...
Curated OER
I Hate to Complain but your Cheese Stinks
Students read and discuss the "fractured" fairy tale "The Stinky Cheese Man". They imagine that they are in the fairy tale and write a letter of complaint concerning the Cheese Man and how he stinks up the town.
Smithsonian Institution
Autobiography through Objects
Show youngsters how objects can tell a story! Here your class will learn about Cuban salsa dancer Celia Cruz by analyzing pictures of her dress, her shoes, and her marriage certificate. After describing Cruz's items and imagining what...
Curated OER
On the Cutting Edge
Introduce the background of design and designers and their role in communicating their thoughts to others. In groups, you can assign participation in a writing cluster on various designers and write paragraphs to submit to magazines. To...
Curated OER
Living The Life of a Scribe
Students write a descriptive letter about life in ancient Mesopotamia. Through video streaming, students discover the history of Mesopotamia. They assume the role of a scribe and compose a three paragraph essay using main ideas and...
Curated OER
Trek Across America
Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing lesson, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a historical figure,...
Curated OER
This Is Tanzania
Young scholars explore Tanzania. In this geography skills lesson, students read This is Tanzania by Richard Lupinsky, Jr. and discuss the impact that volcanoes have had on the nation. Young scholars analyze the imagery in Lupinsky's...