In this lesson, students use debate as a tool for discussing the Revolutionary War.

Studying Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," students explore the intricate relationship between a poem's form and its content.

This lesson has students look at the characters of Romeo and Juliet and perform a quick analysis in an attempt to figure out who to blame for the tragic ending of the play.

This lesson is designed to apply Common Core State Standards and facilitate a comparison of informational texts and primary source material from the Scottsboro Boys trials of the 1931 and 1933, and the fictional trial in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960).

A Seed Discussion is a two-part strategy used to teach students how to engage in discussions about assigned readings. In the first part, students read selected text and identify "seeds" or key concepts of a passage which may need additional explanation. In the second part, students work in small groups to present their "seeds" to one another. Each "seed" should be thoroughly discussed before moving on to the next.

Students use a Socratic seminar to analyze and argue about a recent news topic on which they"™re sure to have strong opinions: the SAT.

In this lesson, students construct their own carousel to go along with the one in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Students work in groups of four or five to create their carousel, including features designed to represent the fears and desires of the students creating it.

In this lesson, students compare Ray Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes to the movie adaptation from the 1980s. Students complete a chart comparing the two versions of the story before moving on to a sheet of questions and an assessment of the teacher's choice.

Students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

In this lesson, students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

In this lesson, students engage in a quick poetry analysis to practice key skills for reading poetry. Students first learn the details of the strategy before applying it to a poem.

In this lesson, students receive strategies that will help them understand whichever Shakespeare play they're about to begin reading.

In this lesson, students analyze songs as an introduction to poetry. Students search songs for examples of poetic devices and assemble them in a storyboard that matches each term with an illustration and a line from the song.

In this lesson, students review traits of some of the major characters in Orson Scott Card's science fiction classic, Ender's Game. Students start by listing Ender's character traits, then discuss them. Students then choose another character to analyze, searching for passages in the novel that provide evidence of their character traits.

This lesson focuses on the author's use of language; moreover, how it is used to convey mood, images, and meaning. Students are tasked here with examining a selection identifying examples of stylistic devices within the passages. Next, students discuss possible reasons for author's selected style choices. The lesson is detailed with examples from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, yet the lesson may be altered to be used with other instructor selected text.

Exploring the use of style in literature helps students understand how language conveys mood, images, and meaning. After exploring the styles of two authors, students will translate passages from one author into the style of another. Then they will translate fables into style of one of the authors.

In this video, students explore the use of supernatural elements within William Shakespeare’s plays, focusing particularly on Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. Students examine supernatural beliefs during the 16th and 17th centuries, and they also identify how supernatural elements drive the plot of many of Shakespeare’s plays.

A teaching guide for Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Includes discussion questions, vocabulary, writing and discussion prompts and activities.

In this lesson, students examine the importance of setting in Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains." Students complete a chart that requires them to think critically about the setting of the story, which can be adapted to other texts, then continue their examination in a written piece.

In this lesson, students define and discuss imagery before searching the text of John Steinbeck's classic novel Of Mice and Men for examples. Students will use their findings as the basis for a literary analysis essay.