“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce’s short story, is used to model how structural moves, the decisions an author makes about setting, point of view, time order, etc., can be examined to reveal an author’s purpose. Groups...

Help your seventh graders relate the ELA Common Core standards to their own learning with these "I Can" statement posters. Each standard has been translated into a statement that pupils can understand and placed on its own page for...

Students create a puppet show for a play. They choose the puppet characters they wish to enact the play and develop scenarios.

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

Address the literary elements in a piece of writing using these materials. The packet includes plenty of resources, and focuses mainly on theme, character, and point of view, with some materials for setting, symbolism, and author's...

Eighth grades can master the ELA Common Core standards! Show your learners the connection between classroom activities and assignments and the standards with this set of "I Can" statement posters. Each standard has been rewritten as an...

Track your class's progress on all of the ELA Common Core standards with these handy charts. Along the left side, each seventh grade identifier is listed along with the full text of the standard. As you teach, reteach, assess,...

Students complete a diagram of the Montgomery bus that carried Rosa Parks into the history books. They read about Rosa Park's contributions to the Civil Rights movement. They role play Rosa Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus.

Young scholars write a rap or hip-hop lyric about the life of a famous Black American. They explore famous Black Americans in history and explore how the rap form compares to other forms of poetic expression.

Young learners research and present information about a chosen subject to their peers, parents, instructors, and community. This lesson has a strong research and public speaking component, and would be ideal for your higher level learners.

Life in the Florida swamps after the Civil War comes alive in the 1946 film adaptation of Majorie Kinnan Rawlings’s The Yearling. The film of this powerful coming-of-age story, filled with love and loss, can be used with or without a...

How would you use census data from 1880-1900? Here are a set of ways you can incorporate the book Little House on the Prairie and US census data from that time period. Learners will research the validity or the book based on factual...

Mystery is an exciting genre for young readers to investigate. The plots are so intriguing! Here is a series of lessons featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that invite learners to enter the world of the mystery genre.  Based on what...

Read and act out folktales, fairy tales, or myths from various Asian American cultures with your class. Each group reads a story aloud and then works together to create a short play or skit about the story. Suggestions for stories are...

"I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works." This colored view is the focus of a close reading activity that asks readers of The Great Gatsby to examine the way...

Differentiate between the various genres in the visual arts world, particularly in Western painting. Your class can view and discuss, in small groups, paintings published on the National Galleries website. Then each student individually...

Eighth graders consider cross-curricular connections between social studies, singing, and current events. They listen to the song, "I Can't Cry Hard Enough." view scenes from September 11, then create presentations using images, a...

Young scholars explore where electricity comes from and how it is used in their everyday lives. Through discussion and hands-on activities, they define electricity and explain how it travels to our homes. Students make informed choices...

Students explore various careers in science. In this science and society instructional activity, the teacher leads a discussion on science careers and duties and responsibilities related to the careers, then students work together to...

Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...

Young writers generate descriptive words. They use pictures of various landscapes (from books, magazines, or the Internet) and complete a story pyramid. The pyramid (included here) asks to describe the main character, the setting, and...

Who was Walt Whitman, and what link does he have to president Abraham Lincoln?  After Lincoln's assassination, Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" This poem and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" are the focus of...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...