By exploring the decisions points in a tragedy, students consider how the plot of the story can change if the key characters make a different choice at the turning point.

Using excerpts from the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, comics, and songs from different musical genres, students examine the characteristics of transcendentalism.

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.

This lesson plan invites students to consider characters from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Students explore a selected character and write poems about objects associated with that character.

This lesson provides the "action piece" for any study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this project, students participate in Dr. King's dream by doing 100 acts of kindness.

Students engage in a brief writing assignment that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally.

This twist on readers theater has students prepare original news programs based on incidents in a recent reading, as they explore standard literary elements of character, conflict, resolution, and setting.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.

To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.

After researching political platforms of past presidents through primary sources and other resources, students create commercials for these presidents using Voki, an online web tool that produces speaking avatars.

Students create storyboards to compare and contrast a book and its film adaptation.

This lesson invites students to create a "Driver's License" for characters that have made a contribution to western expansion in the United States.

In this lesson, students use focused prewriting strategies to explore content and ethical issues related to a persuasive assignment.

With a crafty pen, Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood to create a new genre and shock his audience. This lesson will help students examine Capote's manipulation of language as he forces his audience to take a different look at murderers and consider a different definition of nonfiction. His unique purpose leaves students an interesting text to consider.

What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.

After reading the book ¡Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A., students learn about labor unions, strikes, and organizing for change. Students interview staff members in their school to learn about their daily work life, and write persuasive advocacy letters.

In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.

Students think critically about how design elements in logos work together to tell a changing story about a company or product in this visual rhetoric lesson.

Students take a postcolonial perspective on the portrayal of Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest by comparing it to a modern adaptation of the play.