Enrich a unit on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros with a selection of related activities. The packet contains nine activities that go from pre-reading through wrapping up the novel. Young readers work on studying...

What does the author believe about his topic? Why did he write in the first place? Challenge your class to figure out the answers to these questions as they read through informational texts. The resource provides a breakdown of the...

Imagine a list that includes Alan Abelson of Baron's, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and Mother Jones. High schoolers select a national columnist, read and annotate five columns by this author, noting the rhetorical...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

The brutality of Bloody Sunday—when non-violent protesters who supported voting rights for African Americans were beaten by police—captured a nation. Young historians examine the letter of one horrified American to Congress to consider...

Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lessoned by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My...

Designed to be used with an independent reading book, this activity provides practice with identifying and explaining literary terms. While they read, individuals find instances of literary devices and elements in use in their books....

What a great idea for celebrating Women's History Month and discovering the amazing efforts that individuals have put forth on behalf of women's rights! Learners take a closer look at the speeches and other primary source documents of...

Looking for a project list to conclude a study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? The six suggestions included in the menu (a song, thematic box, CD case, book jacket, blog, scene) could be assigned to individuals or groups....

This is the thirteenth article in a series that was developed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how good descriptions aren't necessarily connected with a lot of words, good descriptions are clean and to the point.