In this lesson, students explore the commercial roots of the American Dream and analyze a historical or literary text that supports this philosophy in conversation with an Op-Ed column.

This lesson is part of a larger unit dealing with Early American Literature. In this lesson, students will become familiar with the figurative devices and strategies used by 17th century Puritan poets when creating closed or fixed form poetry.

Students use a tuning protocol to give and receive peer-to-peer feedback on student writing in a structured, safe environment.

Students can use the ADDIE Model Template to plan their project-based learning assignment.

In this unit from the Standford University The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute students develop a broader understanding of the struggle for equality from 1868 to the present by exploring first-person narratives from a diverse group of Americans. Beginning with a study of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, students determine the criteria for identifying an event as historically significant. Students then explore the impact of the struggle for equality by interviewing people in their community and utilizing resources such as Toni Morrison’s Remember: The Journey to School Integration, Voices of Civil Rights, a national oral history project by the Library of Congress, and StoryCorps, an independent non-profit project that focuses on oral history collections of individuals’ life experiences.

Students will read, critically analyze and write about a series of poems dealing with 'songs about the American experience."

A series of lessons to introduce students to writing a mutigenre paper. Students will analyze and identify literary elements present in selected novels, work in collaborative groups and sythesize various genres to publish a multigenre webpage.

In this lesson students will listen to examples of several dialects and discuss what they hear about each speaker from the recordings. As a class, students will also define dialect and use Alice Walker's novel the Color Purple to continue their analysis.

This lesson pairs Ernest Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain" with Raymond Carver's "Little Things" to guide students to an understanding of the characteristics of minimalist fiction. When asked to think about the reasons behind the popularity of minimalism, students begin to appreciate how literature develops and learn to see it as a reflection of the culture. Afterwards, students are tasked with comparing both works using a Venn diagram. Next, students read additional Carver stories to develop a list of characteristics for minimalist writing. Finally, students explore the roots of minimalism and write using characteristics of the style.

Students will learn about characters and their traits. Using graphic organizers and video clips, students will be able to determine character traits and the main idea of a text.

In this lesson, students will pair reading and discussion of Tim O'Brien's story "The Things they Carried" with a letter-writing activity intended to help students analyze text to identify figurative and connotative meaning as well as ultimately organize and create their own piece of prose.

This resource is a strategy for directing written conversations and silent discussions within the classroom setting. A model, powerpoint presentation is provided as a guide. It may also be adapted to be used by learners.