Students are introduced to Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" by reading "The Butter Battle Book" by Dr. Seuss. After reading the picture book, students discuss the historical allusions as a class and identify its main satirical theme. Students then work in small groups to find additional background information and present it to the class. They chart details from the book and link each one to the historical information they have discovered. Students then repeat this process with "Gulliver's Travels," eventually discovering the overall message that the text communicates about society.

In this lesson, students reflect on their use of language in-school versus out-of-school. They create entries for a pop culture dictionary and assemble them as a class.

Students analyze the literary features of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” and then imagine themselves as one of the characters in the poem many years in the future. Partners share their responses and then brainstorm details on audience, purpose, and tone, before students write a first draft of the selected character’s story. Students use a rubric and peer review as they complete polished versions of their work.

This lesson plan has students do research on the myths surrounding Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. They will engage in reading, writing, and research activities that will have them learn skills in distinguishing truth from fiction as well as developing a deeper understanding about an important American historical document. Links to suggested sites for students to do their research on the myths are provided in the lesson.

The PQP technique—Praise–Question–Polish—requires group members to take a turn reading their drafts aloud as the other students follow along with copies. This oral reading helps the writer to hear the piece in another voice and to identify possible changes independently.

Students begin this multi-day lesson by reading letters to the editor in local, regional, or national newspapers, note common characteristics of the genre, and catagorize those characteristics. Next, they search to find news articles on topics that interest them. After choosing one on which to focus, students summarize the article, then use an online tool to write a letter to the editor. After peer editing them, students publish their letters and send.

This lesson plan provides a basic introduction to Freytag's Pyramid and to the literary element of plot. After viewing a brief presentation about plot structure, students brainstorm the significant events in a story with which they are all familiar and place those events on Freytag’s Pyramid. They work in small groups to map the plot of another story.

In this lesson, students will read and analyze several examples of different texts, identifying the different genres represented in each. Students brainstorm alone and together what they need as readers to read and understand multigenre texts successfully. Students share findings and discuss strategies needed to comprehend, and by extension to write, these texts.

Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this minilesson, students examine the simple sentence, "She walked into the room." Volunteers act out ways that the student in the sentence might enter the room, and the teacher models revising the sample sentence accordingly. Students then suggest other replacements for the verb in the sentence to increase the specificity of the word and explore connotation. Students follow this demonstration by selecting words with powerful connotations for their own writing.

This lesson focuses on the author's use of language; moreover, how it is used to convey mood, images, and meaning. Students are tasked here with examining a selection identifying examples of stylistic devices within the passages. Next, students discuss possible reasons for author's selected style choices. The lesson is detailed with examples from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, yet the lesson may be altered to be used with other instructor selected text.

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 resource details ten exercises to prepare students for writing a narrative essay.

This list of ten provides questions and guidance to help students create character diary entries.

This resource provides 10 different argumentative prompts to spur student writing.

In this list of ten activities for exploring literature, students have the opportunity to consider different ways of analyzing character, theme, and perspective in a variety of texts.

This list of ten activities provides students with a variety of opportunities to explore how foils develop and enhance a piece of literature.