This lesson plan helps ease students into a unit on poetry. Students answer some preliminary questions to activate their prior knowledge of the topic before delving into a poetry anthology and discussing poems they find as a group.

This introductory lesson gives students some of the background information they'll need to be successful in a unit based on William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night. Students write mini-scripts about love, then go through an early speech from the play to acclimate themselves to Shakespeare's language.

In this lesson, students read and discuss the writings of McCourt, Heaney, and Yeats.

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.

Jigsaw is a strategy that emphasizes cooperative learning by providing students an opportunity to actively help each other build comprehension. Use this technique to assign students to reading groups composed of varying skill levels. Each group member is responsible for becoming an "expert" on one section of the assigned material and then "teaching" it to the other members of the team.

In this lesson, students use role-playing strategies to practice effective job interviewing and listening skills.

"To Build a Fire" is an excellent example of American literary naturalism. In this multi-day lesson students will perfrom close-reading analyses of this classic short story as they study the use of point of view to create a narrative. Students will also debate the distinction between knowledge and instinct using textual evidence.

In this lesson on Oedipus the King, students will engage with the key details established in the crime of Laius's murder as described by Creon, focusing on how these details shape and define the central idea of fate.

This grammar unit students will explore the way speech dictates how others see you and treat you. Students will explore specific diction, word choice, vernacular and various sentence structures in order to observe how language can be both inclusive and exclusive.

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.

In this unit, students explore the themes of power, control, abuse, and respect among the characters in Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The resource includes several activities and discussion questions.

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.

This lesson plan has several options for ways of teaching the poem "The Road Not Taken" to students. The plan offers guiding questions, analytical information, and different ways for students to respond after completing their reading of the poem.

In this lesson, students will continue to explore the relationship between individual and society by examining how we so often believe “single stories” and stereotypes about groups of people. The activities that follow ask students to reflect on the basic human behavior of applying categories to the people and things we meet and to think about the circumstances in which “single stories” about others can be harmful or even dangerous.

In this lesson, students review similes and their use before practicing finding similes in a paragraph. Students then complete a handout asking them to write their own similes.

This lesson offers a series of activities that allow students to explore and interact with poetry by writing letters to poets.

After students have read a book about the Holocaust, such as The Diary of Anne Frank or Night by Elie Wiesel, students will view Life is Beautiful and complete discussion questions that challenge their ability to analyze literature using film. When the film is complete, students will write a letter to the director conveying their opinion of the film.

Students will read, critically analyze and write about a series of poems dealing with light and darkness.

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.

In this lesson, students take on the challenge of teaching each other about literary terms. Students are assigned terms for which they design posters which are passed between students to share their information with their classmates.