Lesson Plans

358 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
Jazz and World War II: A Rally to Resistance, A Catalyst for Victory

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

Grade Range
6-8
Couriers in the Inca Empire: Getting Your Message Across

Focusing on the means used by the Incas to send messages over long distances, the lesson introduces students to the Inca Empire, which extended from northern Ecuador to central Chile and from the Andes to the west coast of South America between 1200 and 1535 CE.

Grade Range
9-12
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"

The harrowing adventure of four men fighting for survival after a shipwreck is chronicled by Stephen Crane in "The Open Boat." Students learn about narration, point of view, and man's relationship to nature in this classic example of American literary naturalism.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 2: The Metamorphoses and Modern Poetry: A Comparison of Mythic Characters

Students compare two versions of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Ovid’s version in (Bk X: 1–85) tells the story primarily from an androcentric point of view through the character, Orpheus. In the version expressed by 20th –century a poet H.D. offers the story from a woman’s point of view and articulates the emotions of a broken-hearted, and downright angry, Eurydice.

Grade Range
K-5
Can You Haiku?

Students learn the rules and conventions of haiku, study examples by Japanese masters, and create haiku of their own.

Grade Range
9-12
Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Biographers

We are naturally curious about the lives (and deaths) of authors, especially those, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce, who have left us with so many intriguing mysteries. But does biographical knowledge add to our understanding of their works? And if so, how do we distinguish between the accurate detail and the rumor; between truth and exaggeration? In this lesson, students become literary sleuths, attempting to separate biographical reality from myth. They also become careful critics, taking a stand on whether extra-literary materials such as biographies and letters should influence the way readers understand a writer's texts.

Grade Range
9-12
Women's Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

Students analyze archival cartoons, posters, magazine humor, newspaper articles and poems that reflect the deeply entrenched attitudes and beliefs the early crusaders for women’s rights had to overcome.

Grade Range
9-12
Perspective on the Slave Narrative

Trace the elements of history, literature, polemic, and autobiography in the 1847 Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave.