Students select a book to read based only on its cover art. After reading the book, they use an interactive tool to create a new cover for it.
Book Report Alternative: Hooking a Reader with a Book Cover
Judging a Book by its Cover: The Art and Imagery of The Great Gatsby
Students explore The Great Gatsby's allusion to art and its use of visual imagery and conclude their study by designing their own cover for the novel.
Entering History: Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nikki Giovanni's poem "The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr." is paired with Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, taking students on a quest through time to the Civil Rights movement.
A Poem of Possibilities: Thinking about the Future
After reading John Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player," students write poems describing themselves five years in the future. The teacher takes the poems and mails them to students in five years.
Analyzing the Stylistic Choices of Political Cartoonists
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.
The Comic Book Show and Tell
Students craft comic scripts using clear, descriptive, and detailed writing that shows (illustrates) and tells (directs). After peers create an artistic interpretation of the script, students revise their original scripts.
Onomatopoeia: A Figurative Language Minilesson
Clang, clash, or tinkle? Students explore the use of onomatopoeia in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" before choosing their own sound words in response to specific sounds.
Writing about Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment
After discussing the poem "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, students analyze their own writing habits and create an extended metaphor describing themselves as writers.
Plot Structure: A Literary Elements Mini-Lesson
Students learn that the plot structure described by Freytag's Pyramid is actually quite familiar as they diagram the plots of a familiar story, a television show, and a narrative poem.
You're the Top! Pop Culture Then and Now
Students analyze the lyrics to Cole Porter's "You're the Top!" and then update them to include current "tops" in pop culture.
Put That on the List: Independently Writing a Catalog Poem
In this follow-up to writing collaborative catalog poems, students write individual catalog poems about what really matters in their lives, based on Carver's poem "The Car."
Put That on the List: Collaboratively Writing a Catalog Poem
Using the structure of a list poem, students combine creative expression with poetic techniques and language exploration in order to write group poems about what really matters in their lives.
Choosing One Word: Summarizing Shel Silverstein's "Sick"
Students select what they believe to be the most important word in a text that they have read and justify their choice using examples from the text.
You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?
In this lesson, students read a literary text with the eye of a director, selecting scenes from the text and putting a cinematic spin on them.
Opening the Door for Reading: Sharing Favorite Texts to Build Community
In this lesson, students build classroom community by exploring environmental print and a teacher-created display that focuses on a favorite book. They then create and share their own presentations.
Literary Parodies: Exploring a Writer's Style through Imitation
This lesson asks students to analyze the features of a poet's work then create their own poems based on the original model.
A Bear of a Poem: Composing and Performing Found Poetry
Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.
Discovering Traditional Sonnet Forms
Students read sonnets, charting the poems' characteristics and using their observations to deduce traditional sonnet forms. They then write original sonnets, using a poem they have analyzed as a model.
Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study
Using several translations of the same passage of Beowulf, this lesson introduces students to the idea that translation is not an objective practice, but that it involves "imaginative reconstruction."
An Introduction to Beowulf: Language and Poetics
Students are introduced to Old English and the poetic devices of alliteration, kenning, and compounding in preparation for reading the epic poem Beowulf.