This collection uses primary sources to explore The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This course studies the national literature of the United States since the early 19th century. It considers a range of texts - including, novels, essays, and poetry - and their efforts to define the notion of American identity. Readings usually include works by such authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Toni Morrison.

This class examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. We investigate this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Concepts include traditional and contemporary anthropological topics, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment. Thematic questions addressed in the class include: what is an alien? What is "the human"? Could SF be possible without anthropology?

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "As You Like It" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

In this lesson, students will investigate Dylan as poet by comparing the literary structure of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." They will investigate the differences between poetry and song and examine the similarities between the two in terms of textual structure and style, using their analyses to write original extensions of the poem or song.

In this lesson, students will consider the many kinds of communities that exist, and reflect on their own special ties to a community they are a part of. After watching the video for "Sunday Candy," and hearing the poetry of Chicago-based Kevin Coval, students will hold their own poetry slam featuring poems about community.

Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.

We are naturally curious about the lives (and deaths) of authors, especially those, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce, who have left us with so many intriguing mysteries. But does biographical knowledge add to our understanding of their works? And if so, how do we distinguish between the accurate detail and the rumor; between truth and exaggeration? In this lesson, students become literary sleuths, attempting to separate biographical reality from myth. They also become careful critics, taking a stand on whether extra-literary materials such as biographies and letters should influence the way readers understand a writer's texts.

Emily Dickinson's poetry often reveals a child-like fascination with the natural world. She writes perceptively of butterflies, birds, and bats and uses lucid metaphors to describe the sky and the sea.

This video features an interdisciplinary project that joins poetry, music, visual arts and history. As part of an historical case study of The Great Migration, students studied the Blues, wrote original poems/blues songs, performed those songs for an audience, and created a book that combined the poems with original collage art. This film is a fine example of the arts providing a foundation for engaging students in learning and standards.

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 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.

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Julius Caesar" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

In this lesson, students will explore Dickinson's poem "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" both as it was published as well as how it developed through Dickinson's correspondence with her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

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.

Lesson 3 guides students through Melville's seamless integration of several literary genres"”sermon, scientific writing, drama, and hymn"”and moves into an analytical discussion of "Moby-Dick" as a masterwork that goes above and beyond the appeal of its fictional genre.

Long perceived as a recluse who wrote purely in isolation, Emily Dickinson in reality maintained many dynamic correspondences throughout her lifetime and specifically sought out dialogues on her poetry. These correspondences"”both professional and private"”reveal a poet keenly aware of the interdependent relationship between poet and reader.

Poet. Orator. Actress. Activist. Writer. Singer. Phenomenal Woman. These and many more superlatives are used to describe the incomparable Maya Angelou. Gone too soon in 2014 at the age of 86, Dr. Angelou's legacy will live on through the words she used to eloquently, powerfully, and honestly express emotions, capture experiences, and spread hope.

Lesson OverviewIn this lesson, students will be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's theory on the “single effect” of the short story. They will read a passage from Poe as well as his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”Lesson PreparationRead the lesson and student content.Anticipate student difficulties and identify the differentiation options you will choose for working with your students.Decide how you will put students in pairs for the lesson's tasks.