Writing Narratives for an Audience

In this activity, students write an informational piece of writing and read it to their audience on SeeSaw.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Interactive, Module

Author: REMC Association of Michigan

Court Documents Related to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Memphis Sanitation Workers

This lesson provides fliers and other documents related to the demonstration in Memphis on March 28, 1968. On that day, students near the end of the march broke windows of businesses. Looting ensued. The march was halted. King was deeply distressed by the violence. He and fellow leaders negotiated a commitment to nonviolence among disagreeing factions in Memphis, and another march was planned for April 8. On April 4, as he stepped out of his motel room to go to dinner, he was assassinated.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Examining Utopia & Dystopia in The Giver

This lesson explores how The Giver addresses issues of personal identity, memory, and the value of reading and education. It also examines how this newer read relates to other famous classics in this genre and books that students may have read on their own.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Vengeful Verbs in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Expose middle school students to a first taste of Shakespeare from the angle of the ghost story and launch into the subject of verbs. In this lesson, they learn how Shakespeare uses verbs to move the action of the play. Students then distinguish generic verbs from vivid verbs by working with selected lines in Hamlet's Ghost scene. Finally they test their knowledge of verbs through a crossword interactive puzzle.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Women and Revolution: In the Time of the Butterflies

Set in the Dominican Republic during the rule of Rafael Trujillo, In the Time of the Butterflies fictionalizes historical figures in order to dramatize the Dominican people's heroic efforts to overthrow this dictator's brutal regime. In the following activities, students will examine the actions of the characters in the novel and discuss an all encompassing definition for courage.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Shakespeare's Othello and the Power of Language

By means of group performances, writing exercises, and online search activities, students learn about the sometimes dangerous and destructive powers of language, particularly when wielded by such an eloquent and unscrupulous character as Shakespeare's Iago.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Shakespeare's Macbeth: Fear and the Motives of Evil

Students search an online version of Shakespeare's Macbeth for clues to the motives behind Macbeth's precipitous descent into evil.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Robert Frost's "Mending Wall": A Marriage of Poetic Form and Content

Studying Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," students explore the intricate relationship between a poem's form and its content.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Poems that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost

Behind many of the apparently simple stories of Robert Frost's poems are unexpected questions and mysteries. In this lesson, students analyze what speakers include or omit from their narrative accounts, make inferences about speakers' motivations, and find evidence for their inferences in the words of the poem.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 3: Themes in Lord of the Flies

Lesson 3 involves distinguishing between a literary topic and a literary theme. It articulates a variety of William Golding's themes implicit in the novel "Lord of the Flies" and has students recognize the dominant theme of human nature's propensity for destruction.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 3: Literary Genres in "Moby-Dick"

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.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 2: Thirteen Ways of Reading a Modernist Poem

This lesson prompts students to think about a poem's speaker within the larger context of modernist poetry. First, students will review the role of the speaker in two poems of the Romanticism period before focusing on the differences in Wallace Stevens' modernist"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 2: Symbolism in Lord of the Flies

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.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 1: Mark Twain and American Humor

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

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson 1: Characterization in Lord of the Flies

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.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Folklore in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

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.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find": Who's the Real Misfit?

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."

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Oral and Literary Strategies

Students learn the linguistic strategies Achebe uses to convey the Igbo and British missionary cultures presented in the novel and how the text combines European linguistic and literary forms with African oral traditions.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper": Writing Women

Using the landmark feminist short story "The Yellow Wall-paper," students will employ close reading concepts to analyze setting, narrative style, symbol, and characterization.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Browning's "My Last Duchess" and Dramatic Monologue

Reading Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess," students will explore the use of dramatic monologue as a poetic form, where the speaker often reveals far more than intended.

Material Type: Lesson Plan