As part of their study of Richard Wright's Black Boy, students research and reflect on the current black-white racial divide in America. By examining the work of literature in the context of contemporary events, students will deepen their understanding of the work and of what it means to be an American today.
Examining the Legacy of the American Civil Rights Era
Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains
Students analyze characterization by creating their own superheroes or super-villains,
complete with related gadgets and settings.
Songs of Our Lives: Using Lyrics to Write Stories
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.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing
Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries
and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each
story corresponds.
Facilitating Student-Led Seminar Discussions with The Piano Lesson
August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson invites students to ask a number of questions—big
and small. Students learn how to create effective discussion questions and then put them to use in student-led discussions.
Color My World: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.
Comparing Portrayals of Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Photography and Literature
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.
Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments
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.
An Exploration of The Crucible through Seventeenth-Century Portraits
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.
Prompting Revision through Modeling and Written Conversations
Students create a checklist outlining what effective writers do, revise his or her own writing, and engage in a written conversation to help peers with the revision process.
Brave New Words: Novice Lexicography and the Oxford English Dictionary
Students become novice lexicographers as they explore recent new entries to the dictionary, learn the process of writing entries for the Oxford English Dictionary, and write a new entry themselves.
Creating Better Presentation Slides through Glance Media and Billboard Design
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.
A "Brief, Urgent Message": Theme in Slaughterhouse-Five
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.
Tragic Love: Introducing Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
This lesson introduces students to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by having them examine the ideas of tragedy and tragic love by connecting the story to their own lives.
Narrative Structure and Perspectives in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Using Beloved as a model of a work with multiple narrative perspectives, students use a visualizing activity and close reading to consider ways in which subjective values shape contradictory representations.
"America the Beautiful": Using Music and Art to Develop Vocabulary
Students engage in a rich study of vocabulary words from the song "America the Beautiful," using music and art.
Blurring Genre: Exploring Fiction and Nonfiction with Diary of a Worm
After reading several examples of how a published author incorporates facts in fiction writing, students research a topic of their choice and write fictional diary entries that incorporate factual information.
Young Adult Literature about the Middle East: A Cultural Response Perspective
Adapted from Sheryl L. Finkle and Tamara J. Lilly's Middle Ground: Exploring Selected Literature from and about the Middle East, this variation on traditional literature circles exposes students to a variety of young adult fiction from and about the Middle East. Students read and share research and responses in collaborative groups. At the end of the lesson, they write a letter to welcome an immigrant student to their school and community.
Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose
Students create brochures on the same topic as another piece of writing they have done, highlighting how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers.
Family Memoir: Getting Acquainted With Generations Before Us
Creating a memoir of an older family member allows students both to learn more about their own backgrounds and to learn the power of storytellers.