Allegories are similar to metaphors: in both the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject. However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem. This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell’s widely read novella, Animal Farm, which is available on Project Gutenberg.

This is a lesson plan is meant to assist in teaching and assessing students' ability to identify character development, types, and changes. This resource can be modified to fit a novel unit study, short stories, or plays. The resource is intended to be used as a digital element in an in-person class but can be modified to fit other class types and modalities.Cover image: Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

This lesson plan reviews direct and indirect characterizations, which students can use to aid them in writing a character analysis short essay.  Students will be introduced to the S.T.E.A.L. method, which they will use to identify a character's traits, motives, and physiological makeup.  This resource has been created for secondary levels. This lesson plan can be used to supplement any Literary Element Unit.

Students will learn the potential costs and benefits of social media, digital consumption, and our relationship with technology as a society in the three-week lesson. This inquiry based unit of study will answer the following questions:

Essential Question: How can we use science fiction’s ability to predict the future to help humanity?

Supportive Questions 1: What predictions of future development has science fiction accurately made in the past? This can include technology, privacy, medicine, social justice, political, environmental, education, and economic.

Supportive Question 2: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are positive for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to make these predictions reality?

Supportive Question 3: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are negative for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to stop these negative outcomes?

(Thumbnail is a screenshot of the OER Commons lesson page, taken 7/26/2022 by Christina Nelson.)

This lesson plan is designed to go along with a classroom reading of Hamlet for high school students (grades 9-12). This lesson is designed to help students with their close reading skills and help them to create a deeper understanding of what is going on in one of Hamlet's soliloquies in the play. The lesson can be adapted for any of the soliloquies found in Hamlet (along with other Shakespearean plays). This lesson plan allows students to come outside of the difficulty of Shakespearean language and create meaning through connecting the words to artwork. It would be appropriate as an individual assignment, as well as an assignment for partners or small groups. 

Learn how to make inferences in literature, nonfiction and real life, and to support those inferences with strong, reliable evidence.

An inference is just coming to a logical conclusion from whatever evidence you have. It’s one of the most valuable thinking skills you can learn.

The ability to make inferences is one of the things that make a person what we call “smart.” And we say the person who can’t make inferences is “a little slow on the uptake,” right?, because other people figure out what’s going on more quickly than he or she does. We have to spell things out explicitly for that person.

So, when your teacher says he or she is going to help you learn how to make good inferences, imagine in your head that he or just said that you’re going to learn how to be smart today. You’re going to learn how to think, because, ultimately, that’s what making inferences is all about.

This lesson is intended to teach students digital annotation skills and reinforce their knowledge of rhetorical devices (ethos, pathos, and logos) using Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail.This resource can be modified to focus on annotating physical copies of a document and with other documents.Cover image: Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-strategycom/1054179588/sizes/m/

This is a comprehensive lesson plan to teach 9-10 grade students about making  inferences and gives them practical practice. It also includes formative and summative assessments. Preview image is "thinking cap" by Joe in DC