American Indians in Children's Literature is pleased to share our annual year-end list of books we want you to know about. We'd like multiple copies of them to be in every classroom, school, and public library.
The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "All's Well That Ends Well" 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.
Students use the Informational Text Analysis Tool to deconstruct the essential elements of informational text.
Students individually consider a visual text and draw conclusions based on what they see. They write about their conclusions and explain the evidence used to make that determination.
Students explore the ballads genre by reading medieval ballads to deduce their characteristics, acting out the ballads, comparing medieval and modern ballads using Venn diagrams, and composing their own ballads.
The purpose of this project is two-fold: first, to encourage students to make the reading of poetry a creative act; and, second, to help students appreciate particular literary devices in their functions as semaphores or interpretive signals. Those devices that are about the imagery of a poem (metaphor, simile, personification, description) can be thought of as magnifying glasses: we see most clearly that upon which the poet focuses our gaze. Similarly, those poetic devices that are about the sound of the poem (alliteration, consonance, enjambment, onomatopoeia, and repetition) can be thought of as volume buttons or amplifiers: we hear most clearly what the poet makes us listen to most attentively.
The Bedouins of ancient Arabia and Persia made poetry a conversational art form. Several poetic forms developed from the participatory nature of tribal poetry. Today in most Arabic cultures, you may still experience public storytelling and spontaneous poetry challenges in the streets. The art of turning a rhyme into sly verbal sparring is considered a mark of intelligence and a badge of honor. Students will learn about the origins and structure of Arabic Poetry.
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.
This lesson plan meets the secondary requirements for The Engish Language Arts Standard Reading: Literature Grades 7-12 with the option of meeting the additional standard of Speaking and Listening. This lesson offers specific details with flexibility for implementation in the classroom. Students can work independently or in groups and be able to create their final book project using technology.
C3. Inquiry based lesson plan. Using supporting questions and formative performance assessments, students explore the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Students analyze a summary of the plot of the book, find the main idea(s), look at connected videos, illustrations, and utilize graphic organizers to assess the power of words within this specific historical context.
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.
A set of lessons teaching classical appeals strategies (ethos, pathos, logos) and their use. Utilizes exemplar speeches by President Roosevelt ("Day of Infamy," December 8, 1941) and Sir Winston Churchill ("Be Ye Men of Valour" May 13, 1940).Image credit: © National Archives
The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Coriolanus" 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.
Students use the Cornell notes tool (developed by Walter Pauk from Cornell University) to do close reading of informational text.
The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Cymbeline" 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.
Students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period.
English language learners (ELLs) may have some difficulty identifying the main idea when they are reading a paragraph. Teaching students how to paraphrase can help them learn to pick out what is important in the material that they read.
This lesson plan has been created to help students build their annotation skills, close reading skills, and ability to identify and analyze the central idea of a text. This lesson plan also has been created to build digital annotation skills using the Pages application for iPad. The overall outcome of this lesson plan is to show students the benefits of annotating a text using a digital tool and then taking the information from a text and applying it to create a Public Service Announcement that will bring awareness to a real-world issue or historical event that has had a large impact on our society.
Phillis Wheatley was born around the year 1753 in West Africa before she was kidnapped and brought to the West Indies where she was enslaved. In 1773, the same year she became free from enslavement, she became the first African American and first enslaved person in American history to publish a book of poems. In this lesson, students imagine that a possible meeting between George Washington and Wheatley in 1776 actually occurred and compose questions for them both. Access to this resource requires a free educator login.
The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Henry V" 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.