Lesson Plans

54 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Folk Speech and Figurative Language

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. 

Grade Range
9-12
Kennewick Man: Science and Sacred Rights

This lesson plan explores the controversy surrounding "Kennewick Man," the name given to a skeleton discovered near Kennewick, Washington, in July 1996.

Grade Range
9-12
Tales of the Supernatural

Using Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a guide, students will consider its relationship between the stories Hawthorne, Poe, and Stephen King. In developing a back story for the science, politics, and supernatural ideas of the Victorian era, students will also explore the emergence of the genre as a whole.

Grade Range
9-12
Life in the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints and the Rise of the Merchant Class in Edo Period Japan

The Edo Period (1603-1868) in Japan was a time of great change. The merchant class was growing in size, wealth, and power, and artists and craftsmen mobilized to answer the demands and desires of this growing segment of society. Perhaps the most well known art form that gained popularity during this period was the woodblock print, which is often referred to as ukiyo-e prints. In this lesson students will learn about life in Japan during the Edo period through an investigation of ukiyo-e prints.

Grade Range
9-12
Shakespeare's "Macbeth": Fear and the "Dagger of the Mind"

Shakespeare's preeminence as a dramatist rests in part on his capacity to create vivid metaphors and images that embody simple and powerful human emotions. This lesson is designed to help students understand how Shakespeare's language dramatizes one such emotion: fear.

Grade Range
9-12
Voices of the American Revolution

This lesson helps students "hear" some of the diverse colonial voices that, in the course of time and under the pressure of novel ideas and events, contributed to the American Revolution. Students analyze a variety of primary documents illustrating the diversity of religious, political, social, and economic motives behind competing perspectives on questions of independence and rebellion.

Grade Range
9-12
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: Fact, Fiction, and Artistic License

This lesson encourages close study of Wood's painting, American Revolution primary sources, and Longfellow's poem to understand the significance of this historical ride in America's struggle for freedom. By reading primary sources, students learn how Paul Revere and his Midnight Ride became an American story of patriotism.

Grade Range
9-12
A Raisin in the Sun: Whose "American Dream"?

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspirations to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that raises questions about for whom the "American Dream" is accessible.  

Grade Range
9-12
Realistic Impressions: Investigating Movements in the Visual Arts

Impressionism, Cubism, Realism, Neoclassicism, Mannerism. When we visit a museum or flip through a book we often see these terms, along with the word movement (or sometimes style). This lesson plan will help students to understand the idea of movements in the visual arts, and begin to differentiate between some of the most well known movements in Western art- particularly in painting.