Curated OER
Literary Response and Analysis Theme Literature
Analyze the central idea or literary theme found in a series of quotes from the Shakespearean play, Hamlet. For literary analysis, learners paraphrase excerpts from the play and then identify the characters' motivations for their speech.
Curated OER
Ban That Book!
Take advantage of Banned Book Week to pique students' interest and get them reading! Create a classroom display of previously banned books and allow each member of your class to choose one to read. After they have read their book, get...
Curated OER
A Persuasive Writing Project That Aligns to Common Core Standards
Create a writing project that focuses on the Common Core ELA Standard for writing an argumentative essay.
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literary Text: Wise or Foolish?
A three-part assessment promotes reading comprehension skills. Class members read literary texts and take notes to discuss their findings, answer comprehension questions, write summaries, and complete charts.
abcteach
How to Write a Four Star Extended Response
Teach pupils how to write a strong extended response with this handout. Learners can follow the instructions to write their responses and keep this page with them for reference. There are examples included. This might be a useful...
Curated OER
Do You Want to Be My Friend?
Learners participate in a variety of emergent and early-literacy activities based on a "friendship" theme. Learners listen to the book Do You Want to Be My Friend by Eric Carle, then echo read, choral read, and independently read...
Curated OER
Sarah, Plain and Tall - Intro to Literature Circle jobs
Students read a book with each student having a specific job for the class. In this literature instructional activity, students read Sarah, Plain and Tall over 10 days, dividing up responsibilities for each student to make sure everyone...
Penguin Books
An Educator's Guide to Counting by 7s
Everyone takes a different journey through grief. A series of lesson plans for the novel Counting by 7s introduces readers to the main character who loses her parents in a car crash. Discussion questions and writing prompts combine...
Curated OER
Picturing America: Images and Words of Hope from Romare Bearden and Langston Hughes
A carefully crafted three-day instructional activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The...
Curated OER
Figurative Language iMovie
In order to understand figurative language, learners read 5 poems, each exemplifying a different literary device. They discuss and write responses to each poem. They then choose one literary device which they will use as the basis for a...
Curated OER
The Lightning Thief: Questioning Strategy
Step into the shoes of the Oracle from the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, with this response to reading activity. After reading chapter nine, scholars answer questions from the Oracle's point...
Curated OER
Civil War Literature Circle
Historical fiction can be a valuable asset when learning about the past. Integrate several novels written about the Civil War into your social studies unit, with groups of four working collaboratively to comprehend the novel from...
College Board
2003 AP® English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions Form B
Ever felt stuck in the middle? Some characters do. Scholars choose a novel or play and write essays describing how a character is stuck between cultures. Writers also analyze the techniques used in a passage from We Were the Mulvaneys...
Scripps Ranch High School
The Crucible Journal Project
While reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible, start or end each day with a journal activity. The project includes a list of prompts for each act of the play. Pupils choose a prompt every time they write and connect their own experiences to...
British Council
Twelfth Night
Scholars experience Shakespeare's, Twelfth Night, with an engaging interactive. After watching the story, six activities extend the learning experience. Topics include characters, vocabulary, a sequence of events, comprehension, and...
College Board
2018 AP® English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions
Can a gift be a burden? Scholars take a close look and write essays about characters that have gifts that can also be a disadvantage. Two other essays include discussion of how Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Senior use literary...
College Board
2017 AP® English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions
Music brings back a memory. One prompt from the 2017 AP® English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions asks scholars to read a poem and write essays analyzing the relationship between music and the author's memories. Two...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Problem Solvers: Challenge Activities (Theme 4)
Creative activities help bring literature alive. The first of a set of lessons designed to accompany selections from Theme 4: Problem Solvers uses activities such as skits, responses to music, and social studies projects. These...
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literary Text: Pygmalion and Galatea
Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...
Curated OER
Reader Response
Fifth graders reflect upon different concepts of Language Arts while reading literature. In the novel Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt, the characters discover a spring of eternal youth. After reading the first several chapters of...
Curated OER
Flat Stanley Vocabulary Word Unscramble
In this reading literature response worksheet, students answer questions and write responses to show their understanding of Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown.
McGraw Hill
Writing Prompts, Student Rubrics, and Sample Responses
Whether you are teaching mainstream, advanced, or intervention language arts classes, you will find something helpful in a thorough writing packet. It includes prompts, rubrics, responses, helpful hints, graphic organizers, and many...
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: What Is Happiness?
Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: Nature in the Writings of John Muir and Emily Dickinson
As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's "The...