This cluster includes the following access points.
Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| Analyzing a Character’s Perspective in "All the World’s a Stage": | Explore the famous speech “All the World’s a Stage” from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll analyze how connotation and imagery develop a character's perspective. |
| Analyzing an Extended Metaphor in "All the World’s a Stage": | Explore the famous speech “All the World’s a Stage” from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll analyze an extended metaphor within the speech and how it contributes to the speech’s meaning. |
| The Importance of Seeing in Tangerine: Part Two: | Continue to explore references to sight in the first chapter of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine and how they convey different meanings and reveal information about characters.
This interactive tutorial is part 2 of 2. Click HERE to launch Part One. |
| The Importance of Seeing in Tangerine: Part One: | Explore the difference between vision and perception and how words related to sight convey different meanings and reveal information about characters in the first chapter of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine.
This interactive tutorial is part 1 of 2. Click HERE to launch Part Two.
In Part Two, you'll continue to examine references to sight in the first chapter of Tangerine. You'll examine how these references convey different meanings and reveal information about characters. |
| Personification in "The Railway Train": | Explore the poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson in this interactive tutorial. Learn about personification and vivid descriptions and determine how they contribute to the meaning of a poem. |
| Abraham the Amazing: | Learn about dramatic irony and its impact within a story. In this interactive tutorial, you'll read excerpts of a story about Abraham the circus elephant. You'll read about Abraham's unexpected adventure as you examine the effects of dramatic irony within the text. |
| Metaphors: The Ultimate Transformers!: | Learn about two types of figurative language—similes and metaphors—in this interactive tutorial. You'll read several classic poems, including "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost and "Hope" by Emily Dickinson. You'll examine how each poem uses metaphor to convey a specific idea to readers. |
| Story Structure: Many Paths: | Learn about different kinds of story structures that authors use in this interactive tutorial. You'll examine several types of story structures, including linear and nonlinear structures, as well as open and closed story structures. You'll practice identifying the various features of these different structures. |
| Name |
Description |
| Rain in Summer: What a Bummer, Or Is It?: | In this lesson, students will analyze the symbols and imagery present in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Rain in Summer" to determine its tone and theme. Formative assessment checks are included in the form of student handouts with text-based questions and charts. Students will also write a mini-essay as a summative assessment in which they will develop a claim about the poem's theme, providing text-based examples as support. |
| Why Do We Remember Revere? Paul Revere's Ride in History and Literature: | Virtually all students, at one point or another in their schooling, are exposed to Longfellow's ballad, "Paul Revere's Ride". How accurate is it? Is it responsible for Revere's ride achieving such iconic status? In this lesson from EDSITEment!, a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, students will think about the answers to these and other questions as they read primary and secondhand accounts of events during the American Revolution. |
| Be Careful What You Wish For: "The Monkey's Paw": | Students will read the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, answer text-dependent questions, and examine a theme of the story, "Be careful what you wish for." In the summative assessment students will write their own narrative that shares the same theme. |
| Pygmalion: A Mythological Inspiration: | Students will read Thomas Bulfinch's Pygmalion to answer text-dependent questions, work with vocabulary from the text, and compare the characterization of the two renditions of the myth. Students will also read an abridged excerpt from Act II of George Bernard Shaw's award-winning play, Pygmalion. Students will compare and contrast key characters and their traits from both texts. As a culminating activity, students will create their own narrative version of the Pygmalion myth. |
| Knowledge or Instinct? Jack London's "To Build a Fire": | A concise lesson plan with a variety of visual links and engaging before, during, and after reading activities. |
| Florida: Feast of Figurative Language: | In this lesson (lesson two of a two-lesson unit), students will use Bishop's poem as a model to write their own Florida poem brimming with figurative language and vivid vocabulary. They will also select digital media to reflect the content of their original poems. |
| To the Heart of Human Experience: Structure and Theme (Part 3 of 3): | In this third lesson of a three-part unit, students will explore structure and its affect on theme in poetry. Using pairs of poems about the Holocaust, students will use graphic organizers and rubrics to help them organize their observations into a comparison/contrast essay and Socratic Seminar contributions. The summative assessment for the three-lesson unit is a final draft of an essay (drafted in Part I of the unit) about what separates poetry from prose. |
| Florida: Feast of Connotations: | In this lesson, students will read the poem "Florida" by Elizabeth Bishop and code the text for positive and negative descriptions of Florida. Students will then explain in writing how connotation and figurative language contribute to the poet's description of Florida. |
| Exactly What are You Alluding to?: | Allusions can be difficult for students and hard to teach because not all students have identical or equally extensive exposure to literature, history, and/or popular culture. To overcome this barrier, this lesson builds a "collective consciousness" in each classroom. Students research an allusion and prepare a visual and oral presentation to each explain their allusions. Students are then assessed on their understanding of the allusions taught in one another's presentations. |
| Figurative Language in Macavity: | In this lesson students will use T.S. Eliot's poem, “Macavity," to analyze the power of word choice and figurative language devices in creating coherent and purposefully written descriptions. They will cite text evidence to show how specific lines of the poem impact and drive the description of the subject of the poem, who happens to be a cat. They will write their own narrative using figurative language to describe an animal. |
| Charge of the Light Brigade: Can a Poem Tell a Story?: | Students will be studying the narrative poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and discussing how a “poem can tell a story.” Students will focus upon citing evidence to support central ideas found in the poem and then using those inferences to complete a comparison/contrast essay. Part of this study will include watching a 4 minute clip from the movie The Blind Side in which Tim McGraw’s character explains the meaning of the poem in terms of a football game between rivals LSU and Ole Miss. Students will be asked to compare and contrast the poem’s meaning in terms of battle in war and battle on the football field, determine how these two situations are similar and different, and finally be asked to explain if the football analogy was helpful in aiding the understanding of the story the poem tells. |
| The Paths We Take: A Poetic Comparison: | Students will study two poems in this lesson: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Dale Wimbrow's "The Guy in the Glass." Students will identify and explain the use of metaphor in each poem, and they will also examine the imagery and personification used in each one. Students will also determine a theme of each poem and explain the similarities and differences in their related themes. |
| Packing a Punch: Analyzing Words and Phrases that Make an Impact: | In this lesson, students will determine connotative meanings of words and phrases in Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" and analyze their impact on the imagery created. |
| Poetry and Meaning: "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" : | In this lesson, students will study the poem "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" by Vachel Lindsay. Students will identify the examples of imagery within the poem and determine how the use of imagery contributes to the poem's meaning. Students will also practice making connections between the poem and its background information (President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War) as well as its historical context (World War I). During the lesson, students will also practice determining the meaning of unfamiliar words in the poem. |
Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Title |
Description |
| Analyzing a Character’s Perspective in "All the World’s a Stage": | Explore the famous speech “All the World’s a Stage” from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll analyze how connotation and imagery develop a character's perspective. |
| Analyzing an Extended Metaphor in "All the World’s a Stage": | Explore the famous speech “All the World’s a Stage” from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll analyze an extended metaphor within the speech and how it contributes to the speech’s meaning. |
| The Importance of Seeing in Tangerine: Part Two: | Continue to explore references to sight in the first chapter of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine and how they convey different meanings and reveal information about characters.
This interactive tutorial is part 2 of 2. Click HERE to launch Part One. |
| The Importance of Seeing in Tangerine: Part One: | Explore the difference between vision and perception and how words related to sight convey different meanings and reveal information about characters in the first chapter of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine.
This interactive tutorial is part 1 of 2. Click HERE to launch Part Two.
In Part Two, you'll continue to examine references to sight in the first chapter of Tangerine. You'll examine how these references convey different meanings and reveal information about characters. |
| Personification in "The Railway Train": | Explore the poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson in this interactive tutorial. Learn about personification and vivid descriptions and determine how they contribute to the meaning of a poem. |
| Abraham the Amazing: | Learn about dramatic irony and its impact within a story. In this interactive tutorial, you'll read excerpts of a story about Abraham the circus elephant. You'll read about Abraham's unexpected adventure as you examine the effects of dramatic irony within the text. |
| Metaphors: The Ultimate Transformers!: | Learn about two types of figurative language—similes and metaphors—in this interactive tutorial. You'll read several classic poems, including "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost and "Hope" by Emily Dickinson. You'll examine how each poem uses metaphor to convey a specific idea to readers. |
| Story Structure: Many Paths: | Learn about different kinds of story structures that authors use in this interactive tutorial. You'll examine several types of story structures, including linear and nonlinear structures, as well as open and closed story structures. You'll practice identifying the various features of these different structures. |
