In this lesson, part of a unit on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, students focus on stave 5 as they identify and articulate themes that permeate the story.
As one of literature's most iconic figures, both Shakespeare's plays and poetry provide an interesting glimpse into a variety of essential themes. In this lesson, students will examine how Shakespeare used the sonnet tradition to enhance his stagecraft by performing a scene from his play Romeo and Juliet.
One of the most compelling novels of the twentieth century, Beloved by Toni Morrison has been read in classrooms across the country since its publication in 1987. The novel follows Sethe's escape to freedom, the murder of her child, and her difficult psychological journey as she copes with her past as a slave. As both an historical account of the experiences of slavery and an insightful novel about a supernatural ghost, this text is ideal for upper level high school students and students in AP programs.
This lesson plan is the ninth in the “Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community” series. It provides a video recording of the poet, Joy Harjo, reading the poem “Remember.” The companion lesson contains a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.
What if Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was set in a modern and newly independent nation? What do citizens look for in a leader? In this lesson, students not only consider the significance of this updated staging and political quandary, but will address important questions about how and why Shakespeare is adopted, adapted, and appropriated by people around the world in order for them to express their own political and social concerns through the universal language of Shakespeare.
This lesson plan is the third in the “Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community” series. It provides a video of the United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, reading the poem “Every Day We Get More Illegal” and a companion lesson with a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.
This lesson invites students to reconfigure Meg’s journey into a board game where, as in the novel itself, Meg’s progress is either thwarted or advanced by aspects of her emotional responses to situations, her changing sense of self, and her physical and intellectual experiences.
Expose middle school students to a first taste of Shakespeare from the angle of the ghost story and launch into the subject of verbs. In this lesson, they learn how Shakespeare uses verbs to move the action of the play. Students then distinguish generic verbs from vivid verbs by working with selected lines in Hamlet’s Ghost scene. Finally they test their knowledge of verbs through a crossword interactive puzzle.
Throughout Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the main character Jonas realizes there are more elements to life than he has been led to believe. This lesson explores how The Giver addresses issues of personal identity, memory, and the value of reading and education, as well as other famous classics in this genre and books that students may have read on their own.
French Language and World Literature classes will study the works of 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire and will learn about the connections between the Romantic Movement and themes of 21st-century popular culture.
