English III

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.

Resources on the web

Writing about writing: An extended metaphor assignment

In this lesson, students use Richard Wilbur's poem “The Writer” as an inspiration as they write their own extended metaphor describing themselves as writers. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Word maps: Developing critical and analytical thinking about literary characters

In this lesson, students read the short story “After Twenty Years” by O. Henry and focus on the author's use of characterization. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

What's my subject? A subject-verb agreement mini-lesson

In this lesson, students explore subject–verb agreement using real-life examples from newspapers and song lyrics. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Style: Translating stylistic choices from Hawthorne to Hemingway and back again

In this lesson, students translate passages that demonstrate specific stylistic devices and then translate fables into the style of one of the authors they have been reading. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

So what do you think? Writing a review

After examining samples of movie, music, restaurant, and book reviews, students devise guidelines for writing interesting and informative reviews. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Reader response in Hypertext: Making personal connections to literature

In this lesson, students choose four quotations that inspire personal responses to a novel they have read and create a multi-genre project to express these feelings. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Propaganda techniques in literature and online political ads

This lesson suggests using Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to introduce students to propaganda techniques used in literature and popular culture. This short unit would be appropriate to use with various novels and when discussing advertising campaigns... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 10–12 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Preparing a character for a new job: Character analysis through job placement

In this lesson, students act as employment counselors and design resumes and potential interview questions for literary characters in order to help prepare them for job interviews. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Poetry: Sound and sense

In this lesson, students read and listen to several poems while concentrating on the author's language choices. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

Provided by: 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)

Provided by: 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)

Provided by: 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)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

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)

Provided by: 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)

Provided by: National Endowment for the Humanities

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)

Provided by: 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 Visual Arts Education and English Language Arts)

Provided by: National Geographic

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)

Provided by: 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)

Provided by: National Endowment for the Humanities

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)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE