Student Activities

Southern Approaches to Europe walks students through Allied campaigns in North Africa and the Mediterranean during World War II.

Use this interactive map of Europe during the Cold War to explore key moments in the early Cold War.

En este plan de clase los estudiantes explorarán algunos de los contrastes a los que Esperanza se enfrenta cuando debe abandonar su cómoda vida como hija consentida de terrateniente poderoso, siempre rodeada de familia y de sirvientes, para convertirse en una sirvienta junto con los demás obreros agrícolas emigrantes. Este plan de clase también estudiará el trasfondo de la historia, considerando su marco histórico, social y cultural para descubrir los grandes contrastes y contradicciones que Esperanza descubre al llegar a los Estados Unidos. Y, finalmente, este plan de clase invitará a los estudiantes a prestar atención a algunos de los cambios a los que Esperanza se tiene que enfrentar para convertirse, tras ser una niña privilegiada y mimada, en una jovencita responsable y emprendedora.

To give your students a broader understanding of cave paintings and Paleolithic humans, students can explore other caves in France and compare their findings from several caves.

Directions: This Launchpad, adapted from www.WhatSoProudlyWeHail.org, provides background materials and discussion questions to enhance your reading and understanding of Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” After reading the background, turn to read the story itself.

This Launchpad, adapted from http://www.WhatSoProudlyWeHail.org, provides background materials and discussion questions to enhance your reading and understanding of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron.” After reading the story, you can click on the videos to hear editors Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass, and Diana Schaub converse with guest host James W. Ceaser (University of Virginia) about the story. 

This video of Elizabeth Alexander reading the poem “Praise Song for the Day” that she composed for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration ceremony is the seventh in the “Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community” series. The companion lesson contains a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading and listening to the poem.

Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest derives much of its comedic and thematic heft from the way in which it inverts the values of everyday life.

Anton Chekhov began his career writing humorous pieces for popular magazines to support himself while he studied to become a doctor.

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), one of the most consequential writers of all time, was born into the French aristocracy and educated in the Latin and Greek classics at home by his father.