Students respond to Holocaust literature. In this interactive history lesson, students select quotes from chapter 1 of Elie Wiesel's Night and reflect on their meaning as they record their thoughts on poetic, prose, comic. or picture form.

Middle schoolers are given a line drawing that only that students sees. They are asked to describe the drawings to the reset of the class to see if they can draw it as the teacher describes it. Middle schoolers work with a partner, and...

Poems by O. Henry, Marion Dane Bauer, Monty Roberts, and Langston Hughes provide the text for a study of symbolism, hyperbole, and imagery. Employing the “think-pair-share” strategy learners generate definitions of these terms and locate...

Emerging readers practice reading fluency. First, they listen to the teacher and classmates model fluent reading, and then they practice fluent oral reading with a partner. To close the day, they participate in a Reader's Theatre based...

Students read the story "My Little Sister Hugged An Ape" and make a list of sensory words from the story. In this interdisciplinary math instructional activity, students participate in sensory writing, and complete a questionnaire which...

As part of their exploration of the American dream, class members examine primary source materials to compare immigrant experiences of those arriving early in our country's history to those arriving in the US after World War...

Imagine what it was like to be a slave in the United States in 1845. Eighth graders are given an opportunity to experience life from the point of view of Frederick Douglass as they read and discuss an annotated passage from Narrative of...

Here is a nice set of activities and discussion questions to accompany your class reading of No Pretty Pictures, a memoir of a young girl's experiences and struggle for survival during the Holocaust.

Students brainstorm for fifteen minutes independently, sketching out what they remember or how they want to organize their data. they write a journal along the lines of "what do you remember about kindergarten? Write to a (fictional)...

As the culminating project for a unit study of The House of the Scorpion, class members craft a multi-genre research paper to demonstrate not only their depth of knowledge of a topic of interest to them, but also their...

Students read about the slave trade in primary source documents. They discuss differences and commonalities in experiences. They write prose or poetry from the point of view of one of the figures from the reading and create a triptych.

Analyze characterization in literature. Readers use "Three Shots," from The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway and complete classroom activities that require them to apply literary analysis techniques. They write their own short...

What are hyperboles? Examine the attributes of hyperboles with your high school classes. Pupils read selected poems and prose selections that feature hyperboles and discuss their functions in each work of literature. Specific poems and...

Write short stories in which events are presented in logical order, point of view is clear, theme and characters are developed. Middle schoolers also work on sensory language, concrete language and/or dialogue. They establish their...

Students examine the Japanese writing form of Haibun. They identify the elements of Japanese prose and poetry, analyze a haibun for writing devices, complete a graphic organizer, and compose an original haibun as a form of journal keeping.

"Come gather round people, wherever you roam..." Bring the voice of Bob Dylan to your class with this lesson plan, which takes Dylan's song "The Times They Are A-Changing" and analyzes both the message and voice in the lyrics. Your class...

Readers analyze an excerpt from Kate DiCamillo's novel Because of Winn-Dixie. They read silently, and then hear it read aloud. Definitions for underlined vocabulary words are in the margin, and other potentially difficult words...

Take an in-depth look at a passage from Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie. Included here is the reading passage as well as a step-by-step procedure for reading the text, a set of text-dependent questions, and a final writing...

Investigate the significance of adjectives with a newspaper activity that addresses effective language. Readers probe teacher-provided articles in search of the mighty modifiers, and practice by replacing them with a different word, and...

Tired of those blank stares after your class reads a particularly complex passage from a Shakespearean play? Help high schoolers untangle that prose with a literature circle activity. Ten different roles prompt class members to focus on...

Students use perspective observation sketches to understand verbal description. In this subjective writing lesson, students practice writing subjective conversations using the cartoon worksheets.

Students write their memoir. In this memoir lesson, students study the differences between an autobiography and a memoir. Students construct an outline as the basis for their memoir.

Students develop a strategy for combining various ideas into well formed sentences which then combine to produce effective descriptive paragraphs.

Students analyze American essayists Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass in an introduction to American literary non-fiction writing. In this essay history lesson, students identify methods for writing essays. Students read and analyze...