In this lesson, students closely examine Dickinson's poem "There's a certain slant of light" in order to understand her craft. Students explore different components of Dickinson's poetry and then practice their own critical and poetry writing skills in an emulation exercise. Finally, in the spirit of Dickinson's correspondences, students will exchange their poems and offer informed critiques of each others' work.

By studying other female characters in "The Awakening,"Â students will see how Chopin carefully provides many examples of a socially acceptable "role" that Edna could adopt.

This lesson will examine the most famous speech in American history to understand how Lincoln turned a perfunctory eulogy at a cemetery dedication into a concise and profound meditation on the meaning of the Civil War and American union.

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.

In this lesson and resource, students learn what a thesis statement is and how it relates to an informational reading.

In this lesson, students will finish reading Sugar Changed the World and work in groups to trace the author's development of a central claim in "Satyagraha," completing the Unfolding Analysis Tool.

This lesson pairs a magazine article about the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck in 1975 with the Gordon Lightfoot song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." After comparing and contrasting the elements of each text, students will choose a historical event and, using the song as a model, create a narrative poem about their chosen event. In addition, more contemporary songs and current events will also work for this activity.

The writings of Martin Luther helped spur the Reformation and inspired the rise of Protestantism in the 16th century. Luther gave different reasons for his break from the Catholic Church at different times in his life. This lesson features two sources attributed to Luther - an excerpt from the letter he wrote that accompanied what came to be his 95 Theses and part of a talk he gave later in life. Students compare the documents and consider how to weigh contrasting accounts of history written by the same person.

This is the first in a two-lesson Mid-Unit Assessment. Students will reread the text, "True Crime: The Roots of an American Obsession" and use an Evidence Collection Tool to gather evidence and explain how the author develops the central claim and the connections between the central ideas.

A teachers guide for Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz, including a detailed timeline, supplemental images, questions for each chapter, prompts for class discussion, vocaulary words and phrases, suggested exercises, and ideas for further reading.

In this DBQ Project lesson plan, students will examine ten documents to explore the Mongols and determine how barbaric the barbarians actually were.

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.

On March 12, 1938, the German army moved into Austria to annex the country. To justify the annexation, Hitler called for a public vote on whether the unification should stand. On April 10, 1938, Germans and Austrians voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Anschluss. In this lesson students analyze and compare three different forms of propaganda that influenced the vote ? a speech delivered by Hitler, a campaign poster, and a voting ballot.

This page contains background information, teaching strategies, ways to draw connections to other writers, and discussion questions and writing prompts based on Equiano's work and the time period.

This lesson is designed to assist students with improving their use of punctuation to include: commas, semicolons, colons, and exclamation points. The lesson is designed to encourage students to focus on emotions and their connections with given forms of punctuation. By examining emotions, students gain the ability to better understand the different uses of various punctuation marks. The lesson includes multiple student handouts and examples. There are also pertinent extension activities attached.

Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Guest's famous poem "The Things That Make a Soldier Great" enable close analysis of common poetic devices (e.g., meter, rhyme, tone, symbol, image, consonance, etc.) and of each poem's marriage of form and content. Different interpretations of WWI itself emerge from these poems, which ultimately offer a far-reaching literary supplement to our collective history and understanding of The Great War.

Speech writing is a rhetorical art and provides the content for these scaffolded lessons that support the increased cognitive rigor of literacy standards with presidential writings.

This lesson is designed to assist students through multiple sessions with identifying relevant propaganda techniques in literature, discussing persuasive elements found in print and non-print media and composing a persuasive essay. Lesson is appropriate for use with a provided list of novels to include Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

This is a graphic organizer for close reading Desmond Tutu's speech "The Question of South Africa." There are three versions of the response guide for varying levels of student support.

In this performance task, students will work cooperatively to research the history of radio drama. Resources include original scripts from the 30's and 40's and an audio recording of Orson Wells' "War of the Worlds." Using what they've learned from their research, each group will create a script for a new mystery series. Students can extend the lesson by recording their drama complete with sound effects.