LAFS.8.W.4.10Archived Standard

In this lesson, students will analyze the symbols and imagery present in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Rain in Summer" to determine its tone and theme. Formative assessment checks are included in the form of student handouts with text-based questions and charts. Students will also write a mini-essay as a summative assessment in which they will develop a claim about the poem's theme, providing text-based examples as support.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a Teaching Tolerance lesson centering on Mary Church Terrell. The text shows the role of Mary Church Terrell and the NACW in working for civil rights in the decades before the modern civil rights movement. This lesson is very strong in vocabulary development (including using both context clues and word parts to determine meaning), summarizing, and author's purpose and perspective. The lesson could be used in either Language Arts or Social Studies classrooms and lends itself well to further research.

Type: Lesson Plan

A concise lesson plan with a variety of visual links and engaging before, during, and after reading activities.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson (lesson two of a two-lesson unit), students will use Bishop's poem as a model to write their own Florida poem brimming with figurative language and vivid vocabulary. They will also select digital media to reflect the content of their original poems.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will read the poem "Florida" by Elizabeth Bishop and code the text for positive and negative descriptions of Florida. Students will then explain in writing how connotation and figurative language contribute to the poet's description of Florida.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will use T.S. Eliot's "Macavity" to analyze the power of word choice and figurative language devices in creating coherent and purposefully written descriptions. They will cite text evidence to show how specific lines of the poem impact and drive the description of the character, who happens to be a cat. They will collaborate and discuss the impact of these lines and word choices and then finally write their own coherent and purposefully written descriptions, utilizing the figurative language devices they have identified and analyzed.

Type: Lesson Plan

The three-part unit, of which this lesson is the first, examines the poet's ability to marry form and theme using poetic devices in order to create verse that cuts to the heart of some of humanity's most profound experiences. This first lesson is an exploration of a broad range of poetic and sound devices, and a detailed analysis of how these devices are at work in Shakespeare's Sonnet 71. The lesson culminates in small group review sessions where students apply their learning about poetic terms to revising their own written musings on what distinguishes poetry from prose.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will read chapters 1-7 of Ismael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier while learning how to analyze the chapters using a reader response journal, create an oral argument through a Seed Discussion, and in writing a central idea statement.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson provides students an opportunity to closely read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and analyze the impact of tradition on human behavior through speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students learn about movie adaptations of books through a series of activities exploring the relationship between literature and film.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn how to create a Found Poem with changing moods in this interactive tutorial. This tutorial is Part Two of a two-part series. In Part One, students read “Zero Hour,” a science fiction short story by author Ray Bradbury and examined how he used various literary devices to create changing moods. In Part Two, students will use words and phrases from “Zero Hour” to create a Found Poem with two of the same moods from Bradbury's story.

Click HERE to launch Part One.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This poetry writing teaching idea encourages students to explore their own family history and culture to develop a poem that tells some of the life experiences and ideas who have helped shape who they are as a person. This teaching idea can also be used by the student to write about a character in a novel as a more in-depth way of understanding the character's development.

Type: Teaching Idea

This resource from Teaching Tolerance focuses on Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise." It begins with a discussion of figurative language and the power of words and moves into a discussion of overcoming hardships.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this tutorial from PBS, students will explore what Anne Frank's writing and a video dramatization of her diary reveal about her character and how it changed while she was in hiding. They will develop their literacy skills as they explore how her character changes. During this process, they will also read informational text, learn and practice vocabulary words, and explore content through videos and interactive activities.

Type: Tutorial

"Explore reading strategies using the think-aloud process as students investigate connections between the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe. The unit, which begins with an in-depth exploration of "The Raven," then moves students from a full-class reading of the poem to small-group readings of Poe's short stories ("The Black Cat," "Hop-Frog," "Masque of the Red Death," and "The Fall of the House of Usher"). The unit concludes with individual projects that explore the readings in more detail. Students have the opportunity to choose among the following [three] activities: write a narrative in Poe's style; design a sales brochure for the House of Usher; ...or investigate the author further by exploring biographical and background information in more detail. The lesson includes options for both students who need direct instruction and those who can explore with less structure."

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence