Lesson Plans

367 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
George Orwell's Essay on his Life in Burma: "Shooting An Elephant"

In addition to being an accomplished novelist, George Orwell was also an experienced essayist. Among his most powerful essays is the 1931 autobiographical essay "Shooting an Elephant," which Orwell based on his experience as a police officer in colonial Burma. Through close reading of this piece, students will be engage deeply with the text and discuss the major literary tools present in Orwell's writing.

Grade Range
K-5
Portrait of a Hero

Heroes abound throughout history and in our everyday lives. After completing the activities, students will be able to understand the meaning of the words hero and heroic.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 2: The Realism in Magical Realism

In this triumph of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles a century of the remarkable Buendía family’s history in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo. The three lessons presented here explore the fantastic elements of this imaginary world, the real history that lies behind them, and García Márquez’s own philosophical musings on writing about Latin America.

Grade Range
6-8
Mapping the Past

In this lesson, students learn what ancient maps can tell us about the world views and aspirations of ancient peoples and cultures.

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
6-8
Lesson 5: Trekking to Timbuktu: Timbuktu's Golden Age of Scholarship (Teacher Version)

For many people, Timbuktu is a metaphor for the mysterious, the remote, or the unobtainable. But the Malian city of Timbuktu was, in fact, once a thriving center of commerce and intellectual activity. In the lessons of this curriculum unit, students will learn about the geography of Mali and the early trade networks that flourished there. They will study how the spread of Islam influenced the cultures and economies along the Niger River. They will find out about the three kingdoms that evolved in ancient and medieval West Africa.