English III

God's Weaving in Taylor's "Huswifery"

The students will trace Taylor's use of "conceit" or "extended metaphor" in his poem "Huswifery" where he compares the process of cloth making to God's salvation of man. They will personalize the use of conceit by writing a poem in which they compare a personal transformation with an inanimate task.

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

By Carla Weist.

Sentence Combining and Decombining

Students will focus on stylistic choices and sentence fluency by combining, decombining, and recombining sentences in professional writing, peer writing, and their own writing.

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts)

By Peter Bobbe.

Lesson plans on the web

Analyzing the purpose and meaning of political cartoons

In this lesson, students evaluate political cartoons for their meaning, message, and persuasiveness. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 and 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Analyzing the stylistic choices of political cartoonists

In this lesson, students learn terminology that describes comics and political (or editorial) cartoons and discuss how the cartoonists' choices influence the messages that they communicate. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 and 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Audio listening practices: Exploring personal experiences with audio texts

In this lesson designed to develop students’ involvement with media literacy, students keep a daily diary that records how and when they listen to radio, music (e.g., songs on MP3 players, podcasting), and other streaming media or archived broadcasts. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors' Lives

In this ReadWriteThink lesson, students select American authors to research. They create timelines and biopoems about their authors and then collaborate in teams to design and present a panel presentation where they role-play their authors. The final project requires each student to synthesize information about his or her author in an essay that will be posted online at the U.S. Literary Map Project website. Extension activities include writing a formal research paper and reading other works by the selected authors.

(Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Building Vietnam War scavenger hunts through web-based inquiry

After reading a book about the Vietnam War, students, working in small groups, adopt the perspective of members of a group involved in the war (e.g., soldier, nurse, doctor, photojournalist, TV reporter) and conduct Internet research to explore how that particular group was affected. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Computer Technology Skills)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Connotation, character, and color imagery in The Great Gatsby.

Students explore the cultural connotations of the colors associated with the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and write a character analysis based on their findings. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Designing museum exhibits for “The Grapes of Wrath”: A multigenre project

In this lesson, students read The Grapes of Wrath and create multigenre projects that explore issues from the Depression era. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Draft letters: Improving student writing through critical thinking

This lesson challenges students to think critically about their writing on a specific assignment before submitting their work to a reader. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Exploring the power of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words through diamante poetry

In this lesson, students analyze the power of words while reading Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Families in Bondage

Uses letters written by African Americans in slavery and by free blacks to loved ones still in bondage to give students a glimpse into slavery and its effects on African American family life. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11–12 English Language Arts and Social Studies)

Provider: National Endowment for the Humanities

From Friedan forward—considering a feminist perspective

In this lesson that focuses on feminism, students are challenged to think about how opinions develop and change based on such things as age, experience, time, and place. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Geography and history in songs

Students look at some historical paintings on the Internet and describe the things the paintings reveal about the places depicted in the paintings. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts and Visual Arts Education)

Provider: National Geographic

Is a sentence a poem?

In this lesson, students analyze syntax, imagery, and meaning in a chosen one-sentence poem to decide what makes it a poem. Then students write one-sentence poems describing a picture. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Life on the Great Plains

Students examine the concept of geographic region by exploring the history of the Great Plains. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11–12 English Language Arts and Social Studies)

Provider: National Endowment for the Humanities

Literary parodies: Exploring a writer's style through imitation

In this lesson, students analyze the features of a poet's work and then create their own poems based on the original model. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 and 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Literary scrapbooks online: An electronic reader-response project

This lesson leads students to reflect on and respond to literature by creating an online scrapbook. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–12 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Making connections to myth and folktale: The many ways to “Rainy Mountain”

In this assignment, students write a three-voice narrative based on N. Scott Momaday’s structure in The Way to Rainy Mountain. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 and 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE

Outside in: Finding a character's heart through art

In this lesson, students explore the idea of alienation by examining Edward Hopper's art and Raymond Carver's fiction. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 and 11 English Language Arts)

Provider: IRA/NCTE