This resource provides a lesson designed to assist students with identifying the skills they use to read and comprehend with a small group. Afterwards, learners with use some of those strategies to read online, informational texts. As a culminating activty, students will report their discoveries through discussion pertaining to the differences in reading physical and online texts and the strategies they used.

This resource provides a lesson designed to help students understand the use of satire and the myriad technicques that authors may use to add it to their writing. Students use the film Shrek to examine the four techniques of exaggeration, incongruity, reversal and parody. Students prove their understanding by using satire to rewrite a fairly tale.

Students are introduced to the idea of "The Simpsons" as satire by comparing what they did on a typical day to the things the Simpsons do in the opening sequence of the show. Students use the character profiles on the Simpsons website to analyze six characters, identifying satirical details that reveal the comment/criticism being made about society through the characters. Finally, students use a graphic organizer to record and analyze specific examples of satire as they watch a full episode.

This resource includes a lesson plan designed to assist learners with the concepts of freedom, justice, discrimination and the American Dream. Students will examine the "I Have a Dream Speech" and select powerful words and themes from the text and arrange them into original diamante poems.

This resource includes a lesson that requires students to read a short memoir prior to writing a memoir for a family member. Students are tasked with interviewing the family member prior to formulating their memoir, which may take the forms of photographic collages, image panels, a painting, a video, musical composition, sculpture or any other creative method. This lesson was designed to accompany the PBS documentary, The Mystery of Love. Links are provided to the PBS website for the documentary.

This mini lesson and activity assist learners with improving their ability to read and decipher unfamiliar terms by utilizing context clues.

The Frayer Model is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary building. This technique requires students to (1) define the target vocabulary words or concepts, and (2) apply this information by generating examples and non-examples. This information is placed on a chart that is divided into four sections to provide a visual representation for students.

This activity engages students in an analysis of the 2008 speech by Barack Obama on race. Students will then create an annotated version of the speech that has them analyze and comment upon Obama's use of history, rhetoric, and language in his message. Students can also create a hypertext of this assignment in order to publish works in different media.

This lesson-plan focuses on students analyzing, critiquing, and examining the language and meanings of historical and cultural documents such as The Pledge of Allegiance and the First Amendment. Through this activity they will also examine the impact and meaning of language, as well as the relevance of the meaning behind the words of each document. All handouts are downloadable and printable from this site.

George Orwell's experiences as a policemen for the British Empire in India formed the basis for his early writings, including this essay. After receiving some background information on British rule in Burma as well as on Orwell, students will read the essay in order to analyze its use of metaphors, symbolism and irony.

Students read about what it"™s like to be a Muslim teenager growing up in America at this moment, then consider ideas for countering stereotypes and Islamophobia. Lessons include guided informational readings, research and writing suggestions, videos, and resources to continue the discussion.

Students practice their ability to understand terms within context. Students will read an excerpt from Hamlet and attempt to identify terms.

In the TED Ed lesson focused on language, students will explore the history of English and why semantically equal phrases can evoke very different images. Discussion questions and additional resources are linked in the sidebar.

This lesson alerts students to the fallacies that surround them every day. In this lesson, students deconstruct fallacious images and messages in advertisements and demonstrate their understanding of the fallacies through multimedia presentations.

Students begin by evaluating the universal theme of betrayal from multiple perspectives. After reading time period scenarios as well as reflecting on personal experiences, students use critical thinking skills to explore and identify interventions for each betrayal scenario, including personal examples. Students then research Roman history as they write down thier own critical perspective of a scenario depicting plausible scenes from Roman times. As the culminating project and assessment, students will create comic strips with the Interactive Comic Creator

"To Build a Fire" is an excellent example of American literary naturalism. In this multi-day lesson students will perfrom close-reading analyses of this classic short story as they study the use of point of view to create a narrative. Students will also debate the distinction between knowledge and instinct using textual evidence.

This grammar unit students will explore the way speech dictates how others see you and treat you. Students will explore specific diction, word choice, vernacular and various sentence structures in order to observe how language can be both inclusive and exclusive.

This lesson offers a series of activities that allow students to explore and interact with poetry by writing letters to poets.

After students have read a book about the Holocaust, such as The Diary of Anne Frank or Night by Elie Wiesel, students will view Life is Beautiful and complete discussion questions that challenge their ability to analyze literature using film. When the film is complete, students will write a letter to the director conveying their opinion of the film.