In this Bright Hub Education lesson plan designed for teaching J.K. Rowling's famous book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, students will focus on theme and the development of character. A power point is included.

In this lesson, students review the types of irony before turning their eye to the text of Shakespeare's classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. There, they'll search for examples of irony in the words of the play, citing act, scene, and line number.

In this lesson, students examine Ray Bradbury's use of sensory details in his short story, The Pedestrian. Students discuss descriptive writing, then look for examples of sensory details in the text before revising a previous draft of their own work to strengthen the sensory details it contains.

Six teaching ideas for F.Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby including research, writing, and collaborative assignments.

Six teaching ideas for F.Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby including research, writing, and collaborative assignments.

In this lesson, students view art and photographs, then attempt to capture the theme and tone of those works in writing. Students first discuss the art as a class before splitting into pairs to write a first draft of a story or poem that captures the feeling of the visual works.

In this activity, students will explore "maggie and millie and molly and may" by e.e. cummings. A supporting photograph accompanies this lesson plan, along with guiding questions. Students will work in groups of four to evaluate both the views of nature expressed and how the poet uses structure, word choice, and other devices to convey his message.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an author interview as well as discussion questions, designed to enhance discussion of Carol Rifka Brun's Alex Award winning novel, Tell the Wolves I'm Home. Students will explore themes of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends.

In this Penguin Classics guide to Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara, students will learn the background of the book as well as the author, and deepen their understanding of the text through indepth discussion questions.

In this Penguin Classics guide to Thomas Hardy's novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, students will learn the background of the book as well as the author, and deepen their understanding of the text through indepth discussion questions.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes questions to help students explore Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Known as Hardy's “bestseller,” Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine.

This resource provides stems that align with all the RI and RL standards for grades 9 and 10.

*This remix combines a primary source set on "American Indian Boarding Schools" from the DPLA with an open-source 9th grade literature unit plan on Identity and Culture from Match Fish Tank. In this remix, students are first engaged in inquiry-based examination of a set of primary sources before more closely examining the relationship between identity, society, and schooling in the literary texts links below.For this remix, I have combined two open educational resources to create a text set that enables students to explore the concepts of identity, assimilation, and acclimation in the context of schooling.

In this lesson, students read an excerpt from "A Raisin in the Sun" and a 2013 news article on the persistence of the problem of housing discrimination. Graphic organizers are provided for students to use as they read and discuss the two texts.

This lesson focuses on the pairing of one NY Times article about the Holocaust with a powerful literary passage from the 2005 novel "The Book Thief.' The novel, set during WWII in Germany, is the story of a girl who shares her stolen books with neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. The pairing of the book and article leads students to address the question, "How should the story of the Holocaust be told to young people today?"

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.

In this resource from Crash Course Literature, students will learn about Zora Neale Hurston's life and look at how the interpretations of the book have changed over time. Narrated by John Green.

Using The Secret Life of Bees as the text, students work through topics to create thematic statements.  This is scaffolded so students are working with the teacher as a class first, then in small groups, then individually for teacher feedback.  This can easily be adapted to fit any text being used in class.

Students will use the fictional text being studied in class to take a topic and create a thematic statement based on it.