After reading "The Tempest" or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.

Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.

Nikki Giovanni's poem 'The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.' is paired with Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, taking students on a quest through time to the Civil Rights movement.

Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a ńtime machineî to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.

In this video from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, scholars discuss the author’s ideas about jazz music. Ellison recognized jazz as an art form that represented the complexity of America’s multicultural democratic society. This resource may be used alongside Ellison’s Invisible Man, but is also well suited for use in a lesson, unit, or course on African American literature.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

Students get the inside scoop on a story when they create interview questions and answers for characters in the books they read.

After reading a work of literature as a class, students will brainstorm "crimes" committed by characters from that text. Groups of students will work together to act as the prosecution or defense for the selected characters, while also acting as the jury for other groups. Students will use several sources to research for their case, including the novel and internet resources. All the while, students will be writing a persuasive piece to complement their trial work.

While this lesson uses Shakespeare's The Tempest, there are several other text options. Handouts (except for the model case handout) are generic so that they can be used with any text.

Past and present come together when students interview their parents and create a skit that compares their parents' experiences as middle schoolers with the students own lives.

This twist on readers theater has students prepare original news programs based on incidents in a recent reading, as they explore standard literary elements of character, conflict, resolution, and setting.

Make connections across genres and across cultures to engage students in the study of literary voice and themes. Comprehension skills and vocabulary also come into play, especially for English language learners, as students read a novel and related poems, then write and perform original poems related to the novel.

Students really get into character in this lesson as they act out the parts of a script and analyze character motivations and dialogue.

Students improve their reading fluency by selecting a poem online to perform in class.

Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.

In this video from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, scholars discuss conflicts between Ralph Ellison and the leaders of the Black Arts Movement. Ellison was often criticized for prioritizing aesthetics over politics, putting him at odds with a younger generation of Black artists who had lost faith in the integrationist ideals of an earlier era.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

Learn how classroom teachers, artists and arts organizations are using the arts to teach social and emotional learning (SEL). Social and emotional learning gives students strategies on how to manage their emotions and how to collaborate and empathize with others. These are important skills that help students succeed at school, work, and life. SEL can be incorporated into any subject matter and any grade level, but incorporating the arts can be an especially effective way to learn and practice SEL.