Students compare the stories of creation as told by Ovid in Book I of The Metamorphoses with the Biblical narrative of creation as told in Genesis: 1–2. They identify the significance of those elements and the emphasis placed on them.
Through reading chapters of Edith Wharton's book, "Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belfort," students will see how an American correspondent recounted World War I for American readers.
Grace Lin's novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon combines the story of a courageous young girl who travels to search for help for her family with a set of Chinese traditional tales. The lessons help students to understand the nature of this frame story and to write their own stories of meeting challenges.
In White Fang, Jack London sought to trace the “development of domesticity, faithfulness, love, morality, and all the amenities and virtues.” In this lesson, students explore images from the Klondike and read White Fang closely to learn how to define and differentiate the terms “nature” and “culture."
Jane Austen's classic novel offers insights into life in early nineteenth-century England. This lesson, focusing on class and the status of women, teaches students how to use a work of fiction as a primary source in the study of history.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the first great Latin American poet, is still considered one of the most important literary figures of the American Hemisphere, and one of the first feminist writers. In the 1600s, she defended her right to be an intellectual, suggesting that women should be educated and educators and accusing men of being the cause of the very ills they blamed on women.
Students will learn about the impact of enjambment in Gwendolyn Brooks' short but far-reaching poem "We Real Cool." One element of this lesson plan that is bound to draw students in is a compelling video of working-class Bostonian John Ulrich reciting the poem.
Students are bound to be curious to know what all that Greek writing means. This lesson plan uses an EDSITEment created Greek alphabet animation to help students "decode" the inscription on the Olympic medal. Because the Olympic medal is both a familiar and mysterious object for students, it presents an ideal prompt to build basic literacy in the Greek alphabet. Thus, this lesson uses the Athens 2004 medal inscription as an elementary "text" to help students practice reading Greek and to help reinforce the link between ancient Greek culture and the Olympic games.
This lesson explores elements of wonder, distortion, fantasy, and whimsy in Lewis Carroll's adaptation for younger readers of his beloved classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
