In lesson 1 of this unit, students will explore what it means to be connected to other people with and without digital technology. They'll also start to consider the ways that their digital connections shape who they are.

Twelve Angry Men is a classic play about the American legal system. This lesson introduces students to key ideas they'll need to successfully complete a reading of the play. Students learn about drama terms before they start reading.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This three-part video demonstrates a lesson plan for teaching vocabulary in context of literature. Part one shows an introductory activity to get students thinking about the words used in the text - in this case, Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Parts two and three elaborate and show a small group discussion about the words and the text.

This lesson reviews the literary devices at work in John Updike's "Ace in the Hole." Students consider professional athletes who didn't pan out before taking an in-depth look at Updike's techniques.

Students participate in a fishbowl discussion about various legal situations related to the "age of responsibility" and contribute their ideas and arguments on the matter to a Learning Network Student Opinion blog post. This resource from the New York Times discusses what standard(s) society should use to determine when a youth should be treated as an adult.

Students will read three short stories about women, written in different historical periods. Students will read each story and discuss the development of female characters in a particular setting, the role of women, gender differences, and society's expectations.

Students compose epitaphs for deceased characters in "Hamlet," paying close attention to how their words appeal to the senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone. Students will design gravestones to display their epitaphs. Students must capture the essence of their character's personality and station in life.

Students will apply analytical skills to an exploration of the early Renaissance painting "Death and the Miser" by Hieronymous Bosch. Students will sketch and label the painting using an interactive tool to explore its elements, apply literary analyses tools to their interpretation, predict the painting's plot, and conclude the unit by creating a project that identifies and explains their interpretation of the painting.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an excellent example of many of the concepts the poets were addressing at the turn of the twentieth century. Poets were experimenting with poetic form and responding to the destruction that consumed the Lost Generation. In particular, Eliot incorporates the spirit of the Moderns through his stream of consciousness form and the allusions found in Prufrock’s interior monologue. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Students will read, analyze, and discuss Medieval English ballads and then list characteristics of the genre. Then they will examine the narrative characteristics of ballads by choosing a balad to act out. Using the Venn diagram tool, students will compare Medieval ballads with modern ones. Finally, students will compose and perform their own ballads.

This lesson introduces students to Oscar Wilde's public persona by studying the articles and images used to advertise his American tour in 1882. Students analyze the ways that these texts both promote and discredit Wilde. Students then conduct research followed by the production of a podcast which compares various images of Wilde.

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.

An Anticipation Guide is a strategy that is used before reading to activate students' prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. Before reading a selection, students respond to several statements that challenge or support their preconceived ideas about key concepts in the text. Using this strategy stimulates students' interest in a topic and sets a purpose for reading. Anticipation guides can be revisited after reading to evaluate how well students understood the material and to correct any misconceptions.

In this lesson, students work in pairs to practice listening and speaking to each other. Students will offer input, make clarifying remarks, and demonstrate that they understand what they hear.

This lesson contains an assessment intended to measure student understanding of the theory of Objectivism - the central idea in Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead.

In this lesson, students will demonstrate their understanding of the elements of a short story by collectively creating stories within a group.

In this lesson, students will work in partners to help one another have an evidence-based discussion on how to write a paper comparing two texts with similar central ideas.

A teaching resource for actiities, research assignments, writing prompts and cooperative activities for Ben Franklin including Poor Richard's Almanac.

In this lesson, students work in cooperative groups to prepare presentations on business organization and Big Business during the second part of the Industrial Revolution (1860-1910) in the United States.