This lesson in poetic sound offers students the opportunity to "experiment" with the sounds of sonnets. Students read sonnets from a variety of authors, compleing a series of tasks that make them focus on different audible aspects of the poetry.

Students will have an opportunity to develop such "live interviews" with ancient athletes; working in small groups, they will produce a script based on the results of their research and they will perform the interview for other students in the class.

The Magna Carta served to lay the foundation for the evolution of parliamentary government and subsequent declarations of rights in Great Britain and the United States. In attempting to establish checks on the king's powers, this document asserted the right of "due process" of law.

The emphasis of this lesson is on history and research rather than literature, selections from Jack London's The Call of the Wild are used to provide focus and structure for students' research in online databases of primary sources, and to serve as models of vivid narrative prose for students' own stories.

The activities in this lesson invite students to focus on the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to describe and analyze their conflicts, and then to watch how those conflicts get resolved.

Students examine and listen to a variety of forms of music to learn about the cultural, geographic, and stylistic diversity available within the United States.

This lesson discusses the differences between common representations of Native Americans within the U.S. and a more differentiated view of historical and contemporary cultures of five American Indian tribes living in different geographical areas. Students will learn about customs and traditions such as housing, agriculture, and ceremonial dress for the Tlingit, Dinè, Lakota, Muscogee, and Iroquois peoples.

While Paul Revere's ride is the most famous event of its kind in American history, other Americans made similar rides during the Revolutionary period. After learning about some less well known but no less colorful rides that occurred in other locations, students gather evidence to support an argument about why at least one of these "other riders" does or does not deserve to be better known.

Using archival material, students will associate Francis Scott Key's Star Spangled Banner with historic events and recognize the sentiments those words inspired. Students will explore the symbolic nature of the American flag.

Students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail.

Students explore the two worlds that made contact when Columbus stepped ashore in the New World in 1492. The goals of this lesson are to gain an understanding of the forces within European society that found expression in the voyage of Christopher Columbus, to examine the cultures of those whom Columbus and his successors encountered in the New World, to analyze the degree to which cultural expectations shaped the encounter experience for Columbus, and to reconstruct the encounter experience for those who saw Columbus sail into their world.

Students analyze maps, firsthand accounts, and archival documents to trace the path and aftermath of the Black Death.

Trace the elements of history, literature, polemic, and autobiography in the 1847Â Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave.

Behind many of the apparently simple stories of Robert Frost's poems are unexpected questions and mysteries. In this lesson, students analyze what speakers include or omit from their narrative accounts, make inferences about speakers' motivations, and find evidence for their inferences in the words of the poem.

Poets achieve popular acclaim only when they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspirations to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that raises questions about for whom the "American Dream" is accessible.

Students will be able to identify Romare Bearden's collage technique and explain how his vision represents African American identity. Students will also be able to discuss the importance of improvisation in Jazz Music while analyzing changes in Art and Musical Style reflects changes in society.

Students search an online version of Shakespeare's Macbeth for clues to the motives behind Macbeth's precipitous descent into evil.

This lesson focuses on the Crito, in which Socrates argues against the idea that he should escape the penalty of death imposed on him by Athens, laying the groundwork for future debates over the rights of the individual and the rule of law.

This lesson plan begins with the study of Sophocles' Antigone and the universal issues it raises about power, gender, family obligation, ethics, and honor. It then moves to an exploration of ancient Greece, accents the importance of theater and its staging, the nature of tragedy in this culture, and culminates in student presentations and performances.