Curated OER
Out of the Dust: Questioning Strategies
Bloom's Taxonomy is a great way to address the many levels of comprehension. With explanations and examples of each level, you can create questions that focus on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Curated OER
Shizuko’s Daughter: Knowledge Rating Scale
How well do your kids know key terms from Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori? Have them review a list of words that they will encounter in the novel, and mark which words they know well, which words they've seen before, and which...
Novelinks
The Devil’s Arithmetic: Concept Analysis
A helpful guide to Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic for your literature unit. Use the sections on point-of-view, dramatic irony, and background knowledge, among others, to frame your lessons in an engaging and educational way.
Novelinks
The Crucible: Questioning Strategies Bloom's Taxonomy
Enrich your unit on Arthur Miller's The Crucible with a list of reading questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy. Kids answer questions and provide context for the knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and...
Novelinks
Where the Red Fern Grows: Anticipation Guide Strategy
How do you rise above your challenges? This is a question the anticipation guide for Where the Red Fern Grows answers. Full of questions and direct statements about themes of the text, pupils investigate whether or not the writer would...
Curated OER
Email Buddies
Collaborate with another class (or school) and have your learners share ideas about their reading through the use of email. Perhaps you'll create a specific question or a few questions for writers to choose from. Not only will they...
Novelinks
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Herber Readiness Activity
What does it mean to be alone and isolated? What would you do if you were all alone in a strange place? Kids ponder these questions as they prepare to read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Novelinks
The Hobbit: Writing Assignment
As a culminating assignment for a unit study of heroes that uses The Hobbit as the core text, class members engage in a multi-genre writing project.
Curated OER
Literature Review
Here's a great game that will help your class review a book or unit before an exam. Three students act as judges while two teams take turns responding to your knowledge, interpretation, and judgement questions. Complete directions for...
Curated OER
The Workshop
Kids take a critical look at each other's work in order to understand the editing process while providing constructive suggestions. This handout really sets learners up to successfully offer constructive critique to their...
Curated OER
Genre Lesson: Realistic Fiction
As scholars begin identifying stories as realistic fiction, its important they see many examples to solidify their concepts of this genre. Readers begin with a personal connection, thinking of television shows they like and determining...
Curated OER
Satire and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Does Mark Twain’s satire become sarcasm and does he cross the line of propriety in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? As an introduction of satire, class members view an excerpt from The Daily Show and discuss Stewart's use of this...
Penguin Books
Core Curriculum Lesson Plans for The Lions of Little Rock
Schools in the 1950s and 60s looked very different from the schools we know today. An educator's guide explores the civil rights movement and, specifically, the process of integrating schools. Questions cover key themes in the novel and...
Curated OER
Oliver Twist Goes to Hollywood
How does Oliver Twist, the novel written by Charles Dickens, compare with its screenplay adaptation? Although the activity doesn't require learners to have read the novel, the similarities and differences of the highlighted passages...
Novelinks
Man's Search for Meaning: Anticipation Guide Instructions
To prepare readers for the major concepts in Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, an account of his life in Auschwitz, class members respond to a series of statements on an anticipation guide.
EngageNY
Launching Lyddie
Pupils engage in a close reading of chapter one of Katherine Paterson's novel, Lyddie. After answering text-dependent questions based on their reading, they complete reader's notes about how the setting, characters, and plot interact.
Curated OER
The Last Lecture: Exit Slip
Here's an exit slip activity that asks readers of The Last Lecture to identify three lessons from "Part III: Adventures and Lessons Learned" that resonated for them.
EngageNY
Analyzing Structure and Theme in Stanza 4 of “If”
Here is a lesson that provides scholars with two opportunities to stretch their compare-and-contrast muscles. First, learners compare and contrast their experience reading the fourth stanza of If by Rudyard Kipling to listening to the...
Curated OER
continuidad de los parques
Action! Get your Spanish speakers acting with this plan. First read a short story together, then have small groups write various endings. After they write their ending, have them bring props and film their alternate ending.
PBS
Symbolism and Personification in The Outsiders
A shirt can't really swallow you—right? Readers find examples of symbolism and personification in S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders with two straightforward lessons.
K20 LEARN
Lord of the Flies Unit, Lesson 4: Bad to the Bone
Is the nature of humans inherently good or evil? That is the question scholars consider in the fourth instructional activity of the Lord of the Flies unit. In a Four Corners activity, they examine statements about human nature and stand...
Novelinks
The Good Earth: Questioning Strategy
Readers use Bloom's Taxonomy to create multi-level questions about Pearl Buck's The Good Earth.
EngageNY
Looking Closely at Stanza 3—Identifying Rules to Live By Communicated in “If”
Just as Bud, from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, had rules to live by, so does the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, but how do the two relate? Pupils delve deep into the poem's third stanza, participate in a grand...
K20 LEARN
Lord of the Flies Unit, Lesson 2: Leader of the Pack
The second lesson in the Lord of the Flies unit asks scholars to consider the characteristics of a good leader. After generating a list of these qualities, they annotate a passage from the novel highlighting the leadership qualities of...