In this lesson, students will learn how to analyze and decipher crucial details in the short story “The Women” by Tom Barbash in response to questions put forth to them in their writing prompt. This exercise will help to strengthen their critical thinking and reading comprehension skills, while their writing skills will be challenged through a response to a writing prompt resulting in a formal essay. The lesson will also ask students to recall and integrate ideas from an earlier reading entitled “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn.

This is an English literature lesson plan that analyzes the motif of home in the context of post World War II segregation in California based on the book Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. It is one lesson in a series of interdisciplinary lessons that are detailed in the plan.

This unit introduces instructional moves for how teachers can use their classroom libraries for deep critical thinking on issues of race, racism, and inequality. This unit uses a middle school level novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor, 1976), but the content objectives, teaching strategies, and activities are applicable to any novel study. Building upon how classroom libraries function as resources for thought provoking literature and discussions from the 2019 Yale Teachers Institute Seminar Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines, this unit primarily explores the historical context of the novel primarily using the language of music to analyze characters. Students will develop interpretations about how these conditions influenced characters’ traits, roles, or conflicts and construct a central thesis on a character of their choice. It incorporates pedagogical tools and resources expanding curricular strategies and provides a framework for student discussion beyond the text on issues about race, racism, and forms of inequality.

My unit will align with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Advanced Placement Literature students, although it could be adapted to other texts that pose the same question: Will we be cautious in creating technology, or will our creations ultimately harm us? Many dystopian futures feature violent revolts on humans from mistreated robots. These stories resonate because they mirror past brutality against African slaves, proposals to purify humanity in the Eugenics Movement, and recent mistreatment of immigrants. When we create more beautiful, more intelligent, and more talented humanoid entities to think for us, to entice us, and to comfort us, how will we view ourselves? Our virtual assistants have female voices. Does this amplify biased views of gender? If we treat our virtual assistants as slaves, will this increase our hatred towards other humans? Will our lives become completely irrelevant? In this unit, students will research the current state of robotics, and draw comparisons between our modern creations and the moral and technological warning in Frankenstein, encouraging students to think about the technology they use, feel agency in determining its future, and strive towards creating tools for a more humane world.

In this unit, students will explore a variety of reading material and other media in order to connect technology with issues of social justice. Over the course of three phases, students will consider how technology may be used to facilitate tangible change within communities. Students will first explore a range of science fiction texts and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the advanced technology described in each. They will then focus on a variety of social justice issues in fiction, news articles, and poetry. In doing so, students will determine what issues are most important to them, and think about what steps they might take to raise awareness about these topics. The unit culminates in a project-based learning experience for students, in which they will collaborate and use various forms of digital technology to initiate tangible change, inspired by the readings and discussions from our class sessions. Overall, the unit asks students to consider what it means to be active and responsible citizens within a community, how literature can inspire real societal progress, and what role technology can play in accomplishing that goal.

This unit introduces learners to several ways that maps can be used to demonstrate connections between various kinds of information in a complex novel, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. By practicing the methods described in this unit, students will develop skills that will allow them to envision text elements in new ways and chart their own comprehension. Once they have completed these activities, students will be able to apply their textual “cartography” skills to other texts that they encounter later on.

This resource provides lecture notes and writing assignments for the study of drama. While Othello and Trifles are mentioned specifically, these notes and assignments can be adapted and applied to practically any play.  Unless otherwise noted, the materials in this unit are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

Syllabus for ENG 261: World Literature at the University of the Virgin Islands                                                   An interdisciplinary exploration of the short story and novel from a global perspective, the terminology of literary analysis, interdisciplinary critical approaches, and selected criticism leading to the production of aesthetic and critical analyses of works of fiction. 

This resource contains a downloadable common cartridge file for ENGL1020. The entire course is a true OER remix, containing original OER materials as well as OERs adopted or adapted from other authors. The course includes the texts of readings, or links to the text. Each page in the course has a CC license on it.

Some of your students seem to have superglued their hands to their cell phones; for others, it is their eyes that have been permanently affixed. Why do so many students find their personal technology more appealing than the real humans on around them . . . and what might be the long-term consequences of this? These are the questions this unit will address – first, through the rhetorical analysis of various articles on the effects of cell phones and social media, and then, through a careful study of dystopian fiction. Ultimately, students will draw their own conclusions and share their learning through letters to middle school students and a creative writing piece that suggests what will happen next.

A few of your students may whine about the work you are giving them. They may rage, rage against the dying of the light emanating from their cell phones. They may claim that teachers and parents just don’t understand. But ultimately they will be better educated, more prescient, less addicted, more creative, and of better use to their communities. I think it is worth the fight.

Complementary to 21L.001. A broad survey of texts - literary, philosophical, and sociological - studied to trace the growth of secular humanism, the loss of a supernatural perspective upon human events, and changing conceptions of individual, social, and communal purpose. Stresses appreciation and analysis of texts that came to represent the common cultural possession of our time. Enrollment limited. HASS-D, CI.
Readings this semester ranging from political theory and oratory to autobiography, poetry, and science fiction reflect on war, motives for war, reconciliation and memory. The readings are largely organized around three historical moments: the Renaissance and first contacts between Europe and America (Machiavelli, Cortés, Sahagún); the European age of revolutions (Voltaire, Blake, Williams); the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery (Stowe, Whitman, Lincoln). Readings from the twentieth-century include poetry by Lowell and Walcott and fiction by Ondaatje and O.S. Card.

This lesson was designed for English 9 students as an introduction to literary devices at the beginning of a short stories unit. The ultimate goal will be that students can analyze a story, explaining how an author uses these devices to create literature, but this lesson specifically focuses on domain-specific vocabulary.

This unit looks at the interplay between losses in privacy and gains in convenience that accompany the ever-expanding use of and reliance on digital media and technology in our lives. The aim is not to convince students of a specific stance; rather, it is to provide an opportunity for students to look critically at the ways in which privacy has changed and to think about taking intentional action regarding their own use of digital media.

Each week of the unit, students will grapple with an essential question that focuses their attention on one aspect of privacy. As the core text, George Orwell’s 1984 elucidates two major definitions of privacy: first, the internal thoughts that we develop and contemplate without outside influence; and second, the freedom from being observed, accessed, and controlled by outsiders.

Throughout this unit, students will produce short argumentative pieces drawing evidence from the texts read for and discussed in class. The short pieces of writing students produce throughout the class will culminate in a final argumentative essay weighing the interplay and value of privacy and convenience in our digital lives.

In this unit, we will endeavor to expose students to certain areas and histories of Africa using maps and mapmaking, as well as immersing ourselves in stories of Africa. The unit will focus on the Scramble for Africa – the imperial colonization of the continent by European nations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it will be enhanced by famous European literature of the time period as well as contrasting critique. We will start by talking about maps, their use and their value. We will then immerse ourselves in the Africa that Joseph Conrad created in his notorious novella Heart of Darkness. We will also analyze its relevance and appropriateness for modern syntheses of African culture and history, using an essay by the famed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. We will conclude by looking at a final map of the Congo, the country explored by Conrad and many European colonizers.

Maps are not simply graphic documents that help one get from point A to point B. They certainly accomplish that goal, but maps are also so much more. They are living documents, constantly changing with added knowledge and, indeed, perspective. They are records of our history as a human race, for better or worse. They are existential and philosophical; we may explore ourselves in exploring them. Where we have been, where we are going and why, can all be analyzed and reflected upon at various levels (personal and global) on a map.

The hope is, by the time students have absorbed this information, both their knowledge and appreciation of the African continent as a place just as real and strange and wonderous as their everyday lives will be impacted. And, ultimately, students will be able to discern for themselves where to find the most accurate descriptions of history, whether textual, graphic, or both.

This free video series provides definitions of literary terms in English literature to students and teachers. It also offers examples of how these literary devices can be applied to poems, plays, novels, and short stories. We are in the process of translating the videos into Spanish and many of them now contain these subtitles.

This short fiction unit provides lectures regarding specific texts, discussion assignments, a short writing assignment, and resources for writing a character analysis essay. Unless otherwise noted on the individual pages, the materials in this resource are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

This resource can be used for close readings of literature. The students must identify characters' reactions to plot elements and state the reader's reaction. 

In this unit I lead my Language Arts class through a reading of the classic American novel The Outsiders from a Critical Race Perspective (CRP). Starting with the introduction of the terminology associated with CRP, combined with discussions of some examples of institutionalized inequality in our country, I challenge students to look at the novel from a more critical, and fair minded point of view. In order to help students see the relevance of the novel in today’s world, I will lead them through an examination of some of the unfair and often brutal histories of “outsiders” in our country beginning with the dissemination of hundreds of Native American tribes, the sterilization of thousands during the eugenics craze, and the crisis on our southern border in which thousands have been labeled “outsiders” as others have for centuries. Through discussions, journal writing and projects meant to prompt empathy and understanding in my students, this unit will attempt to bring a new interpretation of The Outsiders to light.