Many students have had little exposure to artwork; and yet paintings, photographs, sculpture, and other art forms can and should be studied as legitimate texts. Since most states now require "visual literacy" as part of their standards, incorporating more artwork into the English classroom certainly is beneficial.

Begin by asking your students what they know about art, art history, or famous artists, such as Picasso. Show students Picasso's Guernica. Ideally, you will want to have a transparency, poster, or projection from the website.

Ask students for their initial impressions of the piece. Provide them with background information, and ask how their impressions change when context is provided. Since the painting is quite large, assign students to look at one quarter of the painting at a time, writing down all the visual details they see and sharing their findings in small groups.

Finally, ask students to write about Picasso's purpose in creating this painting. What did he hope to accomplish and how did he try to do so? The answers to these questions get at the theme of the work. The same questions can be applied to any text-print or visual-students are studying.

Holiday's most popular and influential song is probably her 1939 recording of Strange Fruit, a haunting depiction of the lynchings of African Americans that were occurring throughout the Jim Crow American South. The link allows you to read the lyrics and also listen to part of Holiday's rendition of the song. Because of the subject matter and the vividness of the song's images, this activity should be reserved for high school or mature middle school students.

The song is a perfect text to use to teach tone. Before explaining the context of the song, have students read the lyrics or listen to the song and identify the most powerful or descriptive images.

Next, share some facts about the lynchings in the South during this period, such as, "Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 lynchings of African Americans occurred in the U.S." Ask students to try to determine Holiday's attitude toward this issue, which you can then define as the tone of the song. Have students compare the tone of Holiday's song to that of Langston Hughes' poem on the same topic, Song for a Dark Girl. Then apply the concept of tone to another piece you are currently reading.

Share with students some of the mysteries from Ken Weber's Five Minute Mysteries series and test their sleuthing abilities. After students have had a chance to solve a handful of mysteries (the solutions are in the back of the books), ask them to brainstorm the critical attributes of a good mystery. What elements do mysteries share? What do authors need to do to write a compelling mystery for readers?

Once the class has completed this part of the activity, place them in small groups and ask them to compose some short mysteries themselves. They can plan their stories using the interactive Mystery Cube. Groups can then exchange and attempt to solve one another's mysteries. The mysteries from each group can also be compiled and shared with other classes as well.

In honor of National Poetry Month, introduce your students to a variety of poetic forms. Assign one or two students each day as "poet of the day" for the month of April. Then provide students with several models for creating different forms of poetry. You might use Theme Poems, Acrostic Poems, Diamante Poems, or other Poetry Types to do this.

Have each student select one form of poetry and write an original poem, which he or she can also illustrate. On their assigned days, have students read their poetry out loud to the class.

Read aloud Maya Angelou's poem On the Pulse of Morning, which she read at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993. Ask students what they can infer about the speaker of the poem and her feelings about America.

After the class has had a chance to brainstorm, share with students some biographical information about Angelou. Which events or aspects of her life are reflected in the poem? What pieces of information surprised them and why? Ask students to discuss how one's life and experiences can influence one's writing. Is there evidence of this in students' own writing?

Many of Hans Christian Andersen's stories have been adapted and abridged into animated movies. Begin the activity by asking students to write a brief summary of The Little Mermaid, The Nightingale, The Emperor's New Clothes, or another of Andersen's stories. Then read students the original story and ask them to create a Venn diagram that indicates the similarities and differences between the two versions of the tale. Have them use their diagrams to write essays that compare the two versions. Students could also be encouraged to explain which version they prefer and why. Students can also use the Fractured Fairy Tales interactive to write their own alternative versions of several well-known fairy tales.

Your students probably had some background knowledge about the Titanic even before the release of James Cameron's movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett. A nice way to begin your study is with the Internet Workshop model. You might use the recommended Websites from this calendar entry as part of the Internet Workshop.

Some questions you might ask students to explore are:

• Could this disaster happen today?
• What could have been done to prevent the disaster at that time?
• What really sank the Titanic?
• Did anything good happen as a result of this disaster?

Celebrate the publication of Webster's Dictionary using a variation of the board game Balderdash. Divide students into groups of five or six, and provide each group with a dictionary and some blank paper cut into strips:

• One student scans the dictionary to find a word that he or she believes no one has ever heard before, reads it aloud, and spells it. The other students write down either a real or made-up definition of the word.
  
  
• The student with the dictionary writes the real definition and then collects the other definitions. The leader reads all of the definitions and the students in the group then individually choose which of the definitions they believe is real.
  
  
• Two points are awarded for selecting the correct definition and one point to each student whose definition is selected. Points are totalled and the next person in the circle selects a new word.

When Eleanor Roosevelt learned that Marian Anderson had been denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, she decided to resign her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Show your students her resignation letter, along with the letter from Mrs. Henry M. Robert, Jr., president general of the DAR, responding to Roosevelt's resignation (pages one and two). Students may have difficulty reading the handwritten text so, after viewing the original documents, you may want to transcribe them.

Ask your students to write a letter to a newspaper editor explaining their feelings about a present-day social injustice. Invite your students to compose their letters with the Letter Generator.

In celebration of Earth Day, have your students research some environmentalists who have made major contributions to our planet. A good starting point would be to view the people listed on the Ecology Hall of Fame. Have each student choose one person.

After researching the person's achievements, students can then write letters to the environmentalists asking for their opinions on a current environmental issue or to share ideas on how to protect the earth. Students can write a friendly or business letter using the Letter Generator. After printing the letters, have students turn their letters into letter poems using the Letter Poem Creator, which will help them change their letters into poetic form.

Once the poems are finished, host an Earth Day poetry reading-outdoors if possible.