This lesson, focused on profile writing and its unique characteristics, considers the profiles developed in the film The Soul of a Man. The film's profiles of three blues musicians provide the basis for complementary activities that ask students to consider the meaning of a man's soul and how a person's life exposes the contents of that soul.

This resource is a collection of discussion questions to supplement Sounds of the River by Da Chen, the story of a young Bejing teenager Da Chen who takes his first train ride away from the farm he was raised on to his new university life in Beijing. He soon faces a host of ghastly challenges, including poor living conditions, lack of food, and suicidal roommates.

Some of the most the most essential works of literature in the world are examples of epic poetry, such as The Odyssey and Paradise Lost. This lesson introduces students to the epic poem form and to its roots in oral tradition.

A student interactive resource in which students read between the lines by using the power of inference, predict what will happen next in a story, and identify the main ideas in what they read.

Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them. It is a technique that enables students to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering.

An interactive resource in which students summarize and identify the main idea of select texts.

Worksheets and Powerpoint lessons to help students of differing levels summarize selected passages.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the genre of American tall tales. Students are exposed to several traditional tall tales, then prompted to write an original tall tale set in contemporary America. The tall tale must address a current event or issue and must feature a "larger-than-life" main character. The students use exaggeration and hyperbole to portray the way in which the main character resolves the issue or problem. Students then dramatize their tall tales for the class.

A teacher's guide to Aldous Huxley's, A Brave New World. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A teacher's guide to Agatha Christie's, And Then There Were None. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A teacher's guide to Harper Lee's, Go Set A Watchman. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A comprehensive teacher's guide to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A teaching guide for Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Includes discussion questions, vocabulary, writing and discussion prompts and activities.

Attched and or embedded is a teacher's lesson plan for teaching Theme using a short story called Fish Cheeks. This short story needs visuals added to better support ELLs in the main classroom. Link

In this lesson, students share personal versions of fairy tales from their memories with each other and listen, analyze, and paraphrase the tales' differences and similarities.

Students are presented with a paired critical reading activity uses excertps from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and a New York Times article "˜History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names"™ to exlplore the deep and painful history of racial injustice in the south. Included are close fiction/non-fiction analysis, varied media resources, and writing assignments.

In this resource from the New York Times, a paired critical reading activity uses excertps from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and a New York Times article ‘History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names’ to exlplore the deep and painful history of racial injustice in the south. Included are close fiction/non-fiction analysis, varied media resources, and writing assignments.

I use this editable Google Slides graphic organizer with my middle school ELA students to help them create and prove thematic statements before extending their thoughts into a longer paragraph. (This resource aligns to the part of RL.6.2 in which students are required to determine the theme. It does not address summary.)

Worksheets to help students identify and/or reveal theme in seleceted passages about fables.

Worksheets to help students identify and/or reveal theme in seleceted short story passages.