This is a 10 week unit plan that takes students through the process of learning rhetorical analysis. It starts with the basics: the rhetorical triangle, vocabulary, basic analysis. Once the students have spent a significant amount of time learning and practicing the skills there are two essay assessments built in that align with the SAT rhetorical analysis and with the AP Language and Composition Exam.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, and author biography designed to enhance student reading of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, the story of a man and his son's journey toward the sea and an uncertain salvation.

A teachers guide for an anthology of poems by Robert Frost including background information, questions pertaining to analysis of individual poems, exercises for the class to deepen understanding, and suggestions for supplemental resources.

In this lesson, students complete multiple readings of Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay "A Modest Proposal": guided reading with the teacher, a collaborative reading with a peer, and an independent reading. After independent reading, pairs of students develop a mock television newscast or editorial script, like those found on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report, including appropriate visual images in PowerPoint.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes an introduction and overview; discussion questions focusing on character, theme, and conflict; author biography; and suggestions for further reading designed to enhance student discussion of Keith Donohue’s imaginative and unique tale, The Stolen Child, a classic coming-of-age story that is also about love, the importance of memory, and the transformative power of art.

In this lesson, students will read and analyze chapters XXIX-XXXI of The Awakening, focusing on how story elements contribute to Edna's character development.

Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main ideas, characters, setting, and plot of an assigned reading.

This lesson offers students a chance to compare the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye with the main character from the movie, The Graduate. Students first read and annotate a passage from The Graduate before watching the film and making comparisons between the characters.

This activity asks students to examine and evaluate how the structure of a work can impact meaning and audience experience. Students are tasked with examining text structure, plotting events for a visual representation of the "highs and lows" of the story, and composing a formal paragraph explaining their findings/analysis. It is divided into 3 sections, which can be spread out and completed individually or it can be a single assignment. It should take students about 120 minutes to complete all parts.

Structured Notetaking is a strategy that helps students become more effective note takers. Using graphic organizers specific to a particular text, structured notes assist students in understanding the content of their reading. Initially teachers create the graphic organizers, but as students become more comfortable with using structured notes they are able to construct their own, matching the structure of their graphic organizer to the structure of the texts they read.

This resource contains a set of discussion questions related to Jane's relationships with different people in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Exploring the use of style in literature helps students understand how language conveys mood, images, and meaning. After exploring the styles of two authors, students will translate passages from one author into the style of another. Then they will translate fables into style of one of the authors.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, and author biography designed to enhance student reading of Swamplandia! by Karen Russel, a novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes discussion questions designed to aid students in exploring The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon, a novel that follows Aristotle’s strong-willed daughter as she shapes her own destiny: an unexpected love story, a tender portrait of a girl and her father, and an astonishing journey through the underbelly of a supposedly enlightened society.

In this lesson, students explore symbolism in general before examining the specific symblols present in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

In this lesson, students will work in pairs and discuss as a group to explore both the structure and meaning of the poem, "Doha Thing Long Thought and Kind."

In this lesson, students will explore a video of Mahalia Jackson singing as well as analyze the prose poem, "Don't Let Me Be Lonely [Mahalia Jackson is a genius.]" by Claudia Rankine.

In this lesson from the Academy of American Poets, students will explore a painting, Aspect of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, and the poem "A Haircut" by Elizabeth Alexander. Students will also examine the structure of the poem in order to identify what makes it a prose poem.