Student Activities

13 Result(s)
Grade Range
6-12
Analyzing Photographs from Across A Changing Nation

Students engage with materials developed as part of a partnership between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Endowment for the Humanities to analyze the photographs captured during the original survey projects of the 1970s and create their own interpretations of places near and far to them.

Grade Range
6-8
Esperanza Renace

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.

Grade Range
6-12
Tale as Old as Time: Archetypes in Beauty and the Beast

The idea of the hero’s journey suggests that the adventures heroes and heroines undertake in many of our beloved stories follow a similar pattern. By broadly outlining these stories, you can see they contain characters and plot elements also found in fairytales and legends from different cultures.

Grade Range
9-12
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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. 

Grade Range
9-12
“Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander

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.

Grade Range
9-12
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground

It is perhaps no surprise that Fyodor Dostoevsky is known as one of the greatest psychological writers of all time, given his own dramatic history of suffering.

Grade Range
9-12
Chaucer's "Wife of Bath"

Perhaps the best-known pilgrim in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is Alisoun, the Wife of Bath. The Wife's fame derives from Chaucer's deft characterization of her as a brassy, bawdy woman—the very antithesis of virtuous womanhood—who challenges the prevailing gender inequality of the times.