Stephen Crane's own experiences informed his short story "The Open Boat," one of the best examples of American literary naturalism. In this lesson students answer text-dependent questions in order to examine the relationship bewteen man and nature as well as the role of the third person, omniscient narrator.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, author biography, and suggestions for further reading designed to enhance student discussion of Keith Donohue’s imaginative and unique tale, The Stolen Child.

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 page has discussion questions for Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin.

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.

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.

In this resource from Crash Course Literature, students will learn about Toni Morrison's novel of friendship, betrayal, and loss, Sula. Sula tells the story of two African American girls, the town where they grew up, the tragic event that was central to their youth, and the very different people they became.

In this video, students explore the use of supernatural elements within William Shakespeare’s plays, focusing particularly on Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. Students examine supernatural beliefs during the 16th and 17th centuries, and they also identify how supernatural elements drive the plot of many of Shakespeare’s plays.

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.

Students engage in a character study of the numerous figures created by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities. Students first compare and contrast several forms of communication: email, text message, and telephone. They then complete a character study chart that breaks down physical background, character traits, social status/background, unanswered questions about the character, and a final judgment about the character. Next, students will create text messages between numerous characters that show the relationship between the characters, their background, and plot points that they are involved in. The lesson concludes with students sharing their text messages and a discussion of the rationales behind their choices.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes discussion questions designed to enhance student understanding of Langston Hughes' novel, Tamborines to Glory.

A teacher's guide to Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Includes chapter discussion questions, activities, writing assignments and vocabulary.

In this lesson, students learn about allusions before examing Mary Shelley's extensive use of allusions in her novel Frankenstein.

In this lesson, students develop a fuller understanding of the character of Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie by Tennesee Williams. Students work in groups of three or four to unpack quotations about Amanda and present their ideas about the character to the class.