Use Nathanial Hawthorne's immortal text on the influence of religion on the early American settlements, as well as its continued impact on American culture, with a unit that focuses on The Scarlet Letter. In addition to Hawthorne's...

Learners make a model sea chest, then fill it with provisions for a voyage. They supply a list of the contents of their sea chest, explaining the purpose of each item. The sea chests can be displayed for the school or community.

Students examine World War I poetry for historical context, poetic devices, and participate in a class discussion. They write an analysis of the poetry's form and its content.

High schoolers compare the situation of Latin American immigrants with the situation of immigrants from other areas of the world. They use media to obtain information on topics of academic interest, personal interest, and intellectual...

Students read a "letter" from Dr. Suess' Bartholomew Cubbins and note differences between their lives and Bartholomew's. They utilize prewriting strategies to draft a letter of response to Bartholomew.

Learners read Spelldown, by Becky Mushko and consider how it portrays the Appalachian community. They define and discuss vocabulary presented in the story and write a comparison/contrast paper analyzing two of the story's characters. The...

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

Students, using Leo's Lyrics, investigate common themes in popular music. They create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that analyzes their findings along with a 200 word paragraph stating their observations, conclusions and hypotheses about...

Find a celebration of winter holidays in a versatile and straightforward learning exercise. Learners read a bank of holiday-themed words, including asceticism, solstice, and myrrh, and use context clues to place them...

Here is a vocabulary activity in which your scholars determine the meaning of 10 words using context clues from short readings. They choose from among four words and write their answers on the blank lines at the bottom of the page. They...

Explore fairy tales using this worksheet. Learners read parts of traditional fairy tales and then write their own versions. They complete five fairy tales in this manner. What a motivating way to cover this concept.

Create Ancient Egypt travel brochures. Research the culture of Egypt through the Internet and create an artistic travel brochure of the civilization. The final product is published for dispersal.

Students research the culture of Mexico. For this Mexican culture lesson, students view a PowerPoint presentation about the culture of Mexico and the students take notes. Students write an essay about what they have learned.

Way before the digital age radio was the medium of popular culture. After listening to excerpts from radio programs (easily available on the Internet), participants return to the radio age by creating a two-minute sketch based on a...

Students explore early 20th century steel making.  In this U.S. history steel making lesson, students view and describe a postcard and a picture depicting exaggerated aspects of the steel industry.  Students listen to a poem...

Learners research the western movement in order to learn note taking strategies with nonfiction texts. They use the Internet to search for important information about the western movement using the Cornell Notes note-taking system. They...

Dear Nancy, how do you analyze a letter? Love, Trez. Dear Trez, you use a Letter Analysis Worksheet. Love, Nancy. This richly detailed worksheet provides multiple questions that lead researchers step-by-step through the process of...

CliffsNotes provides a list of study questions to help your high schoolers grapple with The Worldly Philosophers. Some of them are simple and straight forward, while others offer an opportunity to dig in deeper! Consider printing this...

Enhance your lesson on Shakespeare with this poetry activity. After reading lines 139-167 from As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 (provided on the first page), middle schoolers work on a graphic organizer to paraphrase each...

Students explore English by completing an interactive language history activity. In this word recognition lesson, students discuss word formations and the phonetic relationship between letters. Students identify the origin of individual...

The included excerpt would be a perfect contrary follow-up to reading, Rudyard Kipling's White Man's Burden. Journalist E.D. Morel composed the statement against imperialism in 1920. Black Man's Burden is a wonderful primary source...

Get a chuckle from this presentation, which studies the types of humor in psychology and philosophy. The information provided would fuel a good conversation in your lecture, and the multitude of examples will get your class laughing. The...

Lighten the mood in your film class (or film as lit class) with this amusing presentation. From pictures of Sacha Baron Cohen as his infamous character Borat to a play-by-play of jokes and exaggerated plot lines in many popular movies,...