English III

Justice for All? To Kill a Mockingbird and A Time to Kill

Following a study of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, students will view the courtroom scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird and A Time to Kill and determine factors which influenced the verdicts in each trial.

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

By Becky Ackert and Deborah Belknap.

Singing the Song of Life

This lesson requires students to use their reading, comprehension, and analysis skills to analyze a poem and respond creatively to the selection.

Format: lesson plan (grade 11 English Language Arts)

By Angela Taylor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

Provider: 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)

Provider: 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 used in government elections. (Learn more)

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

Provider: 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)

Provider: 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)

Provider: 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)

Provider: IRA/NCTE