This resource is a collection of discussion questions and resoures to supplement Sounder by William H. Armstrong.

In this detailed, extensive, Common Core aligned teacher's guide to Into the Wild by John Krakauer, the curriculum framework is organized around an extended text, shorter texts and guiding questions. Teachers can choose from several charts of materials and activities to build a solid, challenging unit of study utilizing film, research, and complex but high interest text.

Students begin by evaluating the universal theme of betrayal from multiple perspectives. After reading time period scenarios as well as reflecting on personal experiences, students use critical thinking skills to explore and identify interventions for each betrayal scenario, including personal examples. Students then research Roman history as they write down thier own critical perspective of a scenario depicting plausible scenes from Roman times. As the culminating project and assessment, students will create comic strips with the Interactive Comic Creator

In this lesson, students will analyze and interpret the short story "The Gift of the Magi" and write a poem (using the traditional call-and-response blues structure) that reflects their understanding of one of its themes. Then, students will act out their poems and present them to the class, as well as create a graphic organizer that synthesizes and summarizes information from varied sources. The final project will be a mural that demonstrates a multimedia, cross format understanding of the literary themes.

This literacy assessment includes an excerpt from "Julius Caesar," eight text-dependent questions, one constructed response writing prompt, and explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.

A teacher's guide for the novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, including journal prompts, discussion questions, and focused final project ideas.

Students will read a poem, solve a puzzle, and write an original poem with a similar puzzle. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes teaching ideas, chapter vocabulary and questions, discussion topics, comparison to other texts, and an author biography designed to aid students in exploring Thomas Mullen's novel, The Last Town on Earth.

This lesson introduces students to the blues, one of the most distinctive and influential elements of African-American musical tradition. Students take a virtual tour of Memphis, TN and explore the history of the blues in the work of W.C. Handy and a variety of country blues singers whose music preserves the folk origins of this unique American art form. The lesson concludes with students composing their own blues lyrics.

Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate the possibilities for black American progress in the 1960s.

This lesson plan is designed to guide students through a reading of the classic short story, "The Lady or the Tiger?". The lesson provides a guide for an in depth analysis of the text by asking students to seek textual evidence to respond to the provided guided questions. A culminating activity is provided, which directs learners to draft an essay that builds upon that textual evidence to draft a response posed by the title's question.

In this lesson, students are walked through the process of creating a works-cited page and learn how important the process is when writing a research paper.

This interactive applet may be used by students to assist them with the process of letter writing. The generator requires students to fill in the specific components of a letter before it generates a correctly formatted letter. The generator may be used as a letter writing aid or in conjunction with other activities wherein students are tasked with writing a letter. Click the arrow to proceed throught letter.

This lesson builds high school students' writing skills while helping them share their feelings. Students write formal letters to their grandparents as the start of journals filled with correspondance between student and grandparent. Students also engage in peer-review of each others' letters.

A unit plan for Like Any Normal Day by Mark Kram, Jr., including pre-reading activities, journal prompts, vocabulary words, discussion questions, quizzes, and final project ideas.

This unit contains a series a poetry lessons and poem suggestions on the poetry of war. Students will read and closely analyze several 'poems of war' and write their own poem as a culminating activity.

In this lesson, students access their own knowledge of characters from a variety of texts to make comparisons between the familiar concepts of hero and villain and the new concept of the Byronic hero. They first list heroes and villains with which they are familiar and discuss any examples that may blur the lines between the two. Using Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and the character Edward Cullen, students identify the characteristics of the Byronic hero in a Venn diagram and diagram other characters with these traits. Students then choose a project—an expository essay, photo collage, or book cover—to extend their understanding of this complex and compelling character type.

In this Random House for High School Teachers Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, students will explore plot summaries and discussion questions for each of the three books. This guide is designed to direct and enhance student reading as well as supply a number of research and interdisciplinary options.

In this Common Core aligned pdf teacher's guide to Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie, students will explore the themes of love, life, and death through this whimsical novel. The guide includes discussion questions and activities, as well as extension ideas.

This lesson pairs a magazine article about the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck in 1975 with the Gordon Lightfoot song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." After comparing and contrasting the elements of each text, students will choose a historical event and, using the song as a model, create a narrative poem about their chosen event. In addition, more contemporary songs and current events will also work for this activity.