After reading a short story, students use freewriting as a catalyst for a literary analysis essay.
Creative Outlining-From Freewriting to Formalizing
Worth Its Weight: Letter Writing with "The Things They Carried"
This lesson uses a letter-writing activity based on Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" to build empathy as students examine the weight they symbolically carry in their own lives.
Exchanging Ideas by Sharing Journals: Interactive Response in the Classroom
Pairs of students respond to literature alternately in shared journals. Mini-lessons are presented on responding to prompts, creating dialogue, adding drawings, and asking and answering questions.
Developing Characterization in Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing"
Students read Raymond Carver's story "A Small, Good Thing," focusing on characterization in order to develop one of the static charactersthe hit-and-run driver who causes Scotty's deathmore fully.
Discovering Memory: Li-Young Lee's Poem "Mnemonic" and the Brain
Students learn about memory by doing a memory-writing exercise, studying the brain to understand how it affects memory, reading Li-Young Lee's poem "Mnemonic," and creating projects to demonstrate their understanding.
Weaving the Old into the New: Pairing The Odyssey with Contemporary Works
After exploring The Odyssey and a contemporary epic, students choose paired characters from the texts, complete a graphic organizer, and place their characters in hypothetical contemporary situations.
Many Years Later: Responding to Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"
Students analyze the Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" and then write about how the character's pool hall days might influence who the character becomes fifty years in the future.
The Day Jimmy's Boa Taught Cause and Effect
This lesson introduces the concept of cause and effect with Trinka Hakes Noble's books about Jimmy and his boa constrictor.
Connecting Past and Present: A Local Research Project
In this unit, students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school's history.
Creative Problem-Solving with Ezra Jack Keats
Using books by Ezra Jack Keats as inspiration, students explore problems and solutions through read-alouds, discussion, and an interactive bulletin board.
The Children's Picture Book Project
In this lesson students evaluate published children's picture storybooks. Students then plan, write, illustrate, and publish their own children's picture books.
Thinking Inductively: A Close Reading of Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry Picking"
This lesson eases students' fear of interpreting complex poetry by teaching them a strategy with which they determine patterns of imagery, diction, and figurative language in order to unlock meaning.
Love of War in Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story"
Students explore the theme of love of war through texts on camaraderie among soldiers. They then compose a visual collage depicting their beliefs about the relationship between love and war.
When Less IS More—Understanding Minimalist Fiction
This lesson pairs Ernest Hemingway's short story "Cat in the Rain' with Raymond Carver's "Little Things" to guide students to an understanding of the characteristics of minimalist fiction.
Assessing Cultural Relevance: Exploring Personal Connections to a Text
As a class, students evaluate a nonfiction or realistic fiction text for its cultural relevance to themselves personally and as a group.
Analyzing and Podcasting About Images of Oscar Wilde
Students analyze images of Oscar Wilde used to publicize his 1882 American lecture tour. They then compare a caricature to another researched image, sharing this analysis in a podcast.
Textmasters: Shaking Up Textbook Reading in Science Classrooms
Engage students in content area reading with the Textmasters strategy, which allows students to collaborate with their peers in different roles that enable better understanding of the content.
Reaching Across Time: Scaffolded Engagements With a 19th-Century Text
Students in the 21st century need to build background knowledge and fill in textual gaps to enter the unfamiliar world of "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street."
I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts
Tell me about it in your own words! If students can paraphrase the information they have read, then you—and they—can be confident that they understand it.
Using the Internet to Facilitate Improved Reading Comprehension
Could some common online activities actually improve reading comprehension? Understanding RSS feeds requires inferential thinking, as students use the summary to draw conclusions about the full content.