In this lesson, students use found notes and found photographs as inspiration to help them identify subjects, settings, characters, and conflicts for pieces of creative writing.
Rummaging for Fiction: Using Found Photographs and Notes to Spark Story Ideas
Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies
Students compare and analyze novels and the movies adapted from them. They design new DVD covers and a related insert for the movies, reflecting their response to the movie version.
Exploring Setting: Constructing Character, Point of View, Atmosphere, and Theme
Students read texts by Dybek, Dickens, Poe, and Morrison to explore how authors use language to create setting and, in turn, how setting constructs other elements in a literary work.
Exploring Change through Allegory and Poetry
Students read an example of allegory, review literary concepts, complete literary elements maps and plot diagrams, create a pictorial allegory, and write diamante poems related to the theme of change.
Technology and Copyright Law: A "Futurespective"
Students research and report on instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies. They write articles predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.
Creative Outlining-From Freewriting to Formalizing
After reading a short story, students use freewriting as a catalyst for a literary analysis essay.
Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students' research on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution.
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.
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.
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.
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.