John Steinbeck drew from Tom Collins’s Arvin Migrant Camp reports to compose "The Grapes of Wrath." In this lesson, students consider how an author uses nonfiction sources to affect the reader’s perception of the novel’s authenticity.
In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures. They will learn how both types of folktales employ various animals in different ways to portray human strengths and weaknesses and to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next.
Students practice strategies of "close reading" in order to understand Edith Wharton's gripping tragedy about an unhappy marriage set against the stark backdrop of rural New England.
The lessons in this unit provide an opportunity for students to learn about and discuss two U.S. families in which both the father and son became President.
Explore the cultural significance of masks by investigating the role they play in ceremonies and on special occasions in societies from widely separated regions of the world.
Did the increased right to vote translate into an increase in the percentage and totals of white males who actually voted? Students will look for connections between the candidacy of Andrew Jackson and trends in voter participation in the presidential election of 1828.
Through close readings of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, students will analyze how Hurston creates a unique literary voice by combining folklore, folk language, and traditional literary techniques. Students will examine the role that folk groups play in both their own lives and in the novel.
This lesson plan will survey the nature of what Winston Churchill called the Grand Alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union in opposition to the aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
