This page contains a guide with strategies for teaching the life and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, touching on style, themes, and comparisons with other authors.

In this lesson on Hamlet, students will analyze how Shakespeare orders the action and develops his characters through soliloquies.

In this lesson, students will focus on the opening of Act 5.1 and analyze and discuss how setting impacts the drama.

In this lesson on Hamlet, students will read and analyze lines 239-332 from Act 5.2 and analyze how the final scene develops central ideas.

In this lesson on Hamlet, students will explore how Hamlet's character is developed in the tragic resolution.

This lesson seeks to sensitize students to the complex nature of revenge as it is portrayed in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Students learn how the play interprets Elizabethan attitudes towards revenge as reflected in the structure of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Students will analyze the use of language and actions to motivate the avengers in the play; recognize Elizabethan theatrical conventions and their impact; and compare the text with a modern film interpretation.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes questions to help students explore Charles Dickens' novel, Hard Times, a satirical account of the Industrial Revolution.

This lesson examines Jay Gatsby from a different perspective than students are probably used to - as opposed to the loving protagonist, they will view him as the law-breaking criminal he is. Students learn about the prohibition-era setting of the novel and read several op-ed pieces related to the text.

This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading designed to enhance student discussion of A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers' wry and moving novel about the human costs of our new information economy.

In this lesson, students consider the importance of Howard Roark, an important character from Ayn Rand's seminal novel, The Fountainhead. Students discuss Roark after viewing a powerpoint presentation about him.

A teacher's guide to Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Includes common core aligned pre-reading promts, discussion questions, post-reading promts and writing activities.

In this lesson, students will identify how Common's rap song "A Dream" and Walter Dean Myers's short story "Monkeyman" reinterpret Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of nonviolence. Students will delve into a text-based discussion on characterization and conflict, as well as compose an essay on the Six Principles of Nonviolence (rubric available).

A teachers guide for Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Iliad by Homer, including background information, advice for approach, questions for basic comprehension for each book, questions for further study for each book, and ideas for activities to deepen understanding.

Int his lesson, students will consider how the structure of "The Red Convertible" affects the understanding of the text.

Students will learn about the impact of enjambment in Gwendolyn Brooks' short but far-reaching poem "We Real Cool." One element of this lesson plan that is bound to draw students in is a compelling video of working-class Bostonian John Ulrich reciting the poem.

This lesson encourages students to participate in group and class discussions about the novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Students discuss vocabulary, themes, and the writing styles used in the story. They also explore the characters as part of the task.

A teachers guide for Inferno by Dante Alighieri, specifically the translation by Robert Pinsky, including background information, a brief interview with Robert Pinsky, questions for class discussion, and suggestions for further reading.

In this lesson, students are given the basic critical reading skills they need to approach the novel 1984 by George Orwell. Students complete a quick think-pair-share about the novel before practicing a reading technique that uses an organizig grid to help question the text as the students read.

Students are introduced to the elements of a plot diagram through the story of Cinderella.

In this three-part lesson on the inner chapters of "The Grapes of Wrath" students will first determine the function of Steinbeck's opening chapter then explore the relationship between the inner chapters and the Joad narrative chapters throughout the novel. Students will view two documentaries along the way as well as read two relevant articles in order to draw their own conclusions about the purpose of this novel's inner chapters.