As one of literature's most iconic figures, both Shakespeare's plays and poetry provide an interesting glimpse into a variety of essential themes. In this lesson, students will examine how Shakespeare used the sonnet tradition to enhance his stagecraft by performing a scene from his play Romeo and Juliet.

This is a SoftChalk lesson reviewing the figurative language terms simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, and symbolism.

The attached close reading activities go with the novel The Call of the Wild by Jack London and are aligned to 9-12 CC ELA standards and focus on analyzing word choices, interpreting literary techniques, and determining themes.  Full Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/215/215-h/215-h.htm Audio Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuRdoIItQC9ER0sqT4CTUV1uu7pi1JDK 

Students will paraphrase and summarize a key scene from Romeo & Juliet in writing, working both in groups and individually.

This is a poetry lesson that centers around Amanda Gorman's poem, New Day's Lyric. She published this poem near the end of 2021 (Covid-19). Filled with hope and gratitude, the poem is ideal for introducing the use of imagery as well as other poetic elements. It's an amazing poetic piece that ushers students into jumpstarting reflections through poetry. Expect writers to creatively ignite positive vibes that will disseminate throughout the classroom and beyond. What a great way to begin the new year!

A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.4. All questions but one are multiple choice.

A free mini-book to prepare students for the SAT exam with lessons and questions in math, reading, and writing.

This lesson provides a Common Core application for high school students for Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. Students will undertake close reading of passages in Things Fall Apart to evaluate the impact of Achebe's literary techniques, the cultural significance of the work, and how this international text serves as a lens to discover the experiences of others.

In this module, students will read, discuss, and analyze contemporary and classic texts, focusing on how complex characters develop through interactions with one another and how authors structure text to accomplish that development. There will be a strong emphasis on reading closely and responding to text dependent questions, annotating text, and developing academic vocabulary in context.

In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.

First, students will read and analyze NPR's interview with Dr. Frances Jensen, "Why Teens are Impulsive, Addition-Prone And Should Protect Their Brains."Students will then compare and contrast this reading with the article they previously read, "Teenage Brain."   Students applied the ideas conveyed in "Teenage Brain" to Romeo and Juliet's rash actions in Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet.Lastly, students will practice using context clues to decipher word meaning and consult a dictionary to verify the accuracy.

This unit is centered around an anchor text that may be common among content area teachers in a high school setting. Although this unit may be incorporated into any high-school English class, it is aligned with Common Core standards for 9-10. This unit will primarily focus on informational and argumentative texts, and can be used to incorporate more informational texts (as directed by the Common Core) into English classrooms at the high school level. This unit is best suited to a collaborative model of development in which ELA and content area teachers share an anchor text (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and communicate about how to connect diverse skills to common texts and essential questions.

This lesson uses images and the "I See...and I Wonder" strategy to get students thinking about the bigger concepts that objects might represent.  Students often see symbols as mere objects with only a only face value because of the speed with which they encounter them.  However, if we can encourage students to take more time to study an object, other concepts or meanings can come to light.This lesson uses images as an entry point to symbolism because they are less threatening than literature.  The images provided are a starting place, but feel free to remix and use your own images. This journaling activity is about writing (and discussing) to learn.  It can be graded or just formative.  Either way, items to assess would include:Do students really dig into the details, both large and small?Are they being thorough "readers" of the image in the quality of their "wondering"?  There is no length requirement, but the timer recommendations do communicate an expectation that responses to be more than just a sentence or two or a very brief list.For task 2, do students begin to make some interpretive claims?  Are those claims valid?  Are they grounded in the details?If students are struggling to make interpretive claims that make sense with the image, back up and do another image in small groups that might allow more modeling, deeper thinking prompts, or even questioning the students to better understand their interpretations.If students are successful with the images, transition to a short peice of text like a poem.  Students can use the same process of "I See...and I Wonder."  The Task 2 questions can be slightly modified to apply to text rather than image.

This free video series provides definitions of literary terms in English literature to students and teachers. It also offers examples of how these literary devices can be applied to poems, plays, novels, and short stories. We are in the process of translating the videos into Spanish and many of them now contain these subtitles.

This unit is designed to accompany the study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Resources encourage students to recognize a variety of propaganda techniques and to connect those techniques to media that they can find in their everyday lives. Resources also help students to understand the historical uses of propaganda by governments and political parties to influence public opinion. Resources can be used independently of the novel.

In this lesson students will read and analyze “The Flowers” by Alice Walker. Lesson 2 from the Author’s Craft unit focuses on diction.  Students will examine how Walker’s word choice creates tonal shifts in the story that support the theme. The lesson requires student to collect evidence, discuss, and complete a writing assignment in which they continue the story while using diction to maintain the tone. Image source:  "Rose" by Kapa65 on Pixabay.com.

In this assignment, students will read and analyze the article "Teenage Brain" by David Dobbs.  Students will also practice using context clues to decipher word meaning and consult a dictionary to verify accuracy.  Lastly, students will consider how the ideas conveyed in the article apply to Romeo and Juliet's rash actions in Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet

A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.4, featuring a passage from O. Henry's short story, "The Gift of the Magi". The passage has a Dale-Chall text difficulty level of 5-6, and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 5.0.