This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, and author biography designed to enhance student reading of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, a novel that won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
Allegories are similar to metaphors: in both the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject. However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem. This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell’s widely read novella, Animal Farm, which is available on Project Gutenberg.
A teachers guide for Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, including questions for each chapter to increase understanding, topics for class discussion, and assignment ideas to deepen understanding of themes and context
The Bedouins of ancient Arabia and Persia made poetry a conversational art form. Several poetic forms developed from the participatory nature of tribal poetry. Today in most Arabic cultures, you may still experience public storytelling and spontaneous poetry challenges in the streets. The art of turning a rhyme into sly verbal sparring is considered a mark of intelligence and a badge of honor. Students will learn about the origins and structure of Arabic Poetry.
This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography intended to enhance student discussion of Articles of War, Nick Arvin’s harrowing novel about one’s soldier’s confrontation with his own fear during World War II.
This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes questions intended to enrich student discussion of Imbolo Mbue's novel, Behold the Dreamers-- a novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream.
Noh, the oldest surviving Japanese dramatic form, combines elements of dance, drama, music, and poetry into a highly stylized, aesthetic retelling of a well-known story from Japanese literature, such as The Tale of Genji or The Tale of the Heike. This lesson provides an introduction to the elements of Noh plays and to the text of two plays, and provides opportunities for students to compare the conventions of the Noh play with other dramatic forms with which they may already be familiar, such as the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles. By reading classic examples of Noh plays, such as Atsumori, students will learn to identify the structure, characters, style, and stories typical to this form of drama. Students will expand their grasp of these conventions by using them to write the introduction to a Noh play of their own.
This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, author biography, and suggested reading list designed to enhance student reading of Cristina HenrÃquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, a powerfully honest, unforgettable story of two families, brought together by love and tragedy, each struggling to find their place in a new country.
Nigerian born Chinua Achebe is one of the world's most well-known and influential contemporary writers. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is an early narrative about the European colonization of Africa told from the point of view of the colonized people.
In this Bright Hub Education downloadable workbook for A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, students will discover questions for each part of the novel, a tie in to one of the film adaptations, a writing assignment, and an objective test that can be turned in the day before the holiday break.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the Greek tragedy Agamemon through a role-play activity. Students are given a summary of the play, then grouped up to evaluate Agamemnon's decisions.
This activity gives students the opportunity to look closely at the connotation in Countee Cullen's poem "Any Human to Another." There are three versions with varying levels of support.
In this lesson, students gain an understanding of the oral language tradition of Anglo-Saxon poetry and identify how existing lines were affected by this tradition.
Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.
This Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, and author biography designed to enhance student reading of Crow Lake, Mary Lawson's universal drama of love and misunderstanding recounts a family’s tragic and moving past.
Students will study poems about death, including A.E. Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" and Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night." Students will be able to read, analyze and interpret the poems from both the thematic level of death and the detailed level of poetic form. This lesson also includes a guided analysis of a Shakespearean sonnet.
In this Penguin Reader's guide to Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington, 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 Reader's guide to Herman Hesse's Demian, 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 an introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading designed to enhance discussion of Edwidge Danticat's novel, The Dew Breaker, a powerful exploration of the way history, both personal and political, affects those who are swept up in its sometimes violent path.
This resource contains a set of discussion questions for The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck