This lesson plan is the third in the "Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community" series. It provides a video of the United State Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, reading the poem "Every Day We Get More Illegal" and a companion lesson with a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.

One of the most famous political speeches on freedom in the twentieth century was delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union message to Congress. This lesson examines the rhetorical use of "freedom" with the objective of encouraging students to glimpse the broad range of hopes and aspirations that are expressed in the call of and for freedom.

William Faulkner's self-proclaimed masterpiece, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, is a fascinating exploration of the many voices found in a Southern family and community. The following curriculum unit examines the novel's use of multiple voices in its narrative.

Known as both a Southern and a Catholic writer, Flannery O'Connor wrote stories that explore the complexities of these two identities. In this lesson, students will challengethese dichotomieswhile closely reading and analyzing "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

Learn how writer Zora Neale Hurston incorporated and transformed black folklife in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. By exploring Hurston's own life history and collection methods, listening to her WPA recordings of folksongs and folktales, and comparing transcribed folk narrative texts with the plot and themes of the novel, students will learn about the crucial role of oral folklore in Hurston's written work.

This lesson plan provides a sequence of activities that you can use with your students before, during, and after readingGate A-4. Use the whole sequence, or any of the activities, to help your diverse students enter and experience the poem.

The object consists of a text in the public domain that has been downloaded from the web, uploaded into the web-based application Kami, and annotated by me with instructions and reflection questions for the students. Students whould read the story while adding their own annotations (such as observations or questions). They may also highlight or underline sections of text and respond to the comments of other students.

      The activity is meant to integrate a whole-class read-aloud and an independent active reading of the text, taking the best from both: students will be able to engage in a discussion with their classmates while reading reflecting, and annotating at their own pace.

This lesson plan asks students to read To Kill A Mockingbird carefully with an eye for all instances and manifestations of courage, but particularly those of moral courage.

This lesson introduces Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for Storm Lake High School's Diverse Literature course. It gives background on the author, setting, and the book itself as well as introducing students to the window-mirror concept in making connections with literature.

This lesson introduces Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for Storm Lake High School's Diverse Literature course. It gives background on the author, setting, and the book itself as well as introducing students to the window-mirror concept in making connections with literature.

This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles--traditional and innovative, western and nonwestern--and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms. Toward the end of the term, we will be particularly concerned with the relationship between art and war in a diverse selection of works.

This pathway is an introduction to short story with a focus on the literary terms and devices of characterization, theme, juxtaposition, setting, structure, alliteration and diction.  By the end of this unit, students will be able to summarize and analyze the listed elements of short story.  Students will be asked to identify important words and explain why these words are significant to the overall message.  Students will engage with both text and visual representations to foster discussions about how diction and images influence meaning.  Finally, students will compare and contrast "The Last Flower" literary elements with another self-chosen short story.

The lessons in this unit provide you with an opportunity to use online resources to further enliven your students' encounter with Greek mythology, to deepen their understanding of what myths meant to the ancient Greeks, and to help them appreciate the meanings that Greek myths have for us today. In the lessons below, students will learn about Greek conceptions of the hero, the function of myths as explanatory accounts, the presence of mythological terms in contemporary culture, and the ways in which mythology has inspired later artists and poets.

In this lesson, students analyze Jacob Lawrence'sThe Migration of the Negro Panel no. 57(1940-41), Helene Johnson's Harlem Renaissance poem"Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem"(1927), and Paul Laurence Dunbar's late-nineteenth-century poem"We Wear the Mask"(1896), considering how each work represents the life and changing roles of African Americans from the late nineteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance and The Great Migration.

Students align original FSA photographs from the 1930s and the author's own journal entries, to trace parallel elements John Steinbeck then incorporated into passages in The Grapes of Wrath.

This lesson focuses on character analysis throughout William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. While contemplating both direct and indirect characterization techniques, students will be able to consider how characterization builds relationships among the boys in the novel.

Uncover the sources of Twain's comic genius in American traditions of dialect humor and literary satire.

Curriculum unit of three lessons explores Williams's use of expressionism to more fully comprehend the theatrical devices and themes in The Glass Menagerie. In Lesson 1, students identify and explicate Williams' expressionist techniques.

Lesson 2 is a study of symbols in William Golding's novel "Lord of the Flies." After reviewing the general concept of symbolism, students focus on four of the most dominant symbols that permeate the novel: the island itself; the conch; the Lord of the Flies effigy; fire.

By studying other female characters in "The Awakening," students will see how Chopin carefully provides many examples of a socially acceptable "role" that Edna could adopt.