Students learn about the life and music of John Lennon, write a short story from their lives integrating lyrics from some of their favorite songs, and create a class book of stories.

In this lesson, students analyze similarities and differences among depictions of slavery in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Douglass' Narrative, and nineteenth century photographs of slaves. Students formulate their analysis of the role of art and fiction, as they attempt to reliably reflect social ills, in a final essay.

Students are often asked to perform speeches, but rarely do we require students to analyze speeches as carefully as we study works of literature. In this unit, students are required to identify the rhetorical strategies in a famous speech and the specific purpose for each chosen device. They will write an essay about its effectiveness and why it is still famous after all these years.

In this lesson, students incorporate analyses of characters from The Crucible with examinations of original seventeenth-century portraits of Puritans to create a visual portrait of the character. The project culminates in a "Portrait Gallery Walk" where students present and defend their artwork.

This lesson introduces the concept of "glance media" through an analysis of billboards. Students apply design concepts by creating a slide presentation to accompany an existing historical speech.

As a culminating activity for Slaughterhouse-Five, students make a compilation album (a CD with 6-8 tracks) that reflects their analysis, understanding, and reaction to the ideas in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

Students write letters expressing personal views on issues like equal pay, equal education/employment opportunity, and gender roles—and receive these letters six years later.

Students explore the concepts of audience and purpose by focusing on an issue that divided Americans in 1925, the debate of evolution versus creationism raised by the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Use Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book as an accessible introduction to satire. Reading, discussing, and researching this picture book paves the way for a deeper understanding of Gulliver's Travels.

Students use persuasive writing and an understanding of the characteristics of letters to the editor to compose effective letters to the editor on topics of interest to them.

Students explore and analyze the techniques that political (or editorial) cartoonists use and draw conclusions about why the cartoonists choose those techniques to communicate their messages.

By exploring myths and truths surrounding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding this famous speech from the Civil War era.

Students analyze World War II posters, as a group and then independently, to explore how argument, persuasion and propaganda differ.

Students research the effects of the Vietnam war on a specific group of people who were involved. They then create Internet scavenger hunts to share with the class.

Students explore the year they were born through interviews and research, and then weave the details into a newspaper or booklet, written from another person's point of view.

This lesson has students explore freedom of speech by examining the Pledge of Allegiance from a historical and personal perspective and in relationship to fictional situations in novels.

Students analyze propaganda techniques used in pieces of literature and political advertisements. They then look for propaganda in other media, such as print ads and commercials.

After reading Shakespeare's Hamlet, students identify, analyze, and explain how elements in Botticelli's painting Birth of Venus and examples from the play illustrate the philosophy of Renaissance Humanism.