Jason Allen offers a comparative discussion of two important Caribbean poets and playwrights, Aime Cesaire and Derek Walcott, to emphasize the impact of Caribbean literature upon the postcolonial world. By using biographical and historical detail to support his analysis of some of Cesaire and Walcott's key texts, Allen offers insight into what it means to be a Caribbean writer - looking back to a colonial past, and forward to a global future. This audio recording is part the Interviews on Great Writers series presented by Oxford University Podcasts.

The students will be reading The Diary of Anne Frank and using videos and tours to learn more about why she was hiding and what eventually happened to her. 

The attached close reading activities go with the novel The Call of the Wild by Jack London and are aligned to 9-12 CC ELA standards and focus on analyzing word choices, interpreting literary techniques, and determining themes.  Full Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/215/215-h/215-h.htm Audio Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuRdoIItQC9ER0sqT4CTUV1uu7pi1JDK 

This lesson provides a Common Core application for high school students for Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. Students will undertake close reading of passages in Things Fall Apart to evaluate the impact of Achebe's literary techniques, the cultural significance of the work, and how this international text serves as a lens to discover the experiences of others.

After reading "The Tempest" or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.

This is a SoftChalk lesson reviewing the figurative language terms simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, and symbolism.

In Module 10.1, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts and explore how complex characters develop through their interactions with each other, and how these interactions develop central ideas such as parental and communal expectations, self-perception and performance, and competition and learning from mistakes.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze nonfiction and dramatic texts, focusing on how the authors convey and develop central ideas concerning imbalance, disorder, tragedy, mortality, and fate.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this lesson students will read and analyze “The Flowers” by Alice Walker. Lesson 2 from the Author’s Craft unit focuses on diction.  Students will examine how Walker’s word choice creates tonal shifts in the story that support the theme. The lesson requires student to collect evidence, discuss, and complete a writing assignment in which they continue the story while using diction to maintain the tone. Image source:  "Rose" by Kapa65 on Pixabay.com.

In this module, students will read, discuss, and analyze contemporary and classic texts, focusing on how complex characters develop through interactions with one another and how authors structure text to accomplish that development. There will be a strong emphasis on reading closely and responding to text dependent questions, annotating text, and developing academic vocabulary in context.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Students research, evaluate, and synthesize information about the Harlem Renaissance from varied resources, create an exhibit, and highlight connections across disciplines (i.e., art, music, and poetry) using a Venn diagram.

This lesson introduces students to the concept of word connotations through specific examples.  After an introductory slide show that creates student engagement through think-pair-share activities, students put their new learning into practice by completing a connotation worksheet with a partner. 

This mini-unit is an introduction to poetry and can be used in middle school or early high school. Each lesson should take about an hour and covers basic such as: Prose vs. Poetry, Traditional vs. Organic Poetry, poetry structure, figurative language and sound devices, context clues, tone, and meaning. Several examples of poems are provided along with notes, guided practice, and indepent assessments. 

This is a poetry lesson that centers around Amanda Gorman's poem, New Day's Lyric. She published this poem near the end of 2021 (Covid-19). Filled with hope and gratitude, the poem is ideal for introducing the use of imagery as well as other poetic elements. It's an amazing poetic piece that ushers students into jumpstarting reflections through poetry. Expect writers to creatively ignite positive vibes that will disseminate throughout the classroom and beyond. What a great way to begin the new year!

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 unit is centered around an anchor text that may be common among content area teachers in a high school setting. Although this unit may be incorporated into any high-school English class, it is aligned with Common Core standards for 9-10. This unit will primarily focus on informational and argumentative texts, and can be used to incorporate more informational texts (as directed by the Common Core) into English classrooms at the high school level. This unit is best suited to a collaborative model of development in which ELA and content area teachers share an anchor text (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and communicate about how to connect diverse skills to common texts and essential questions.

This unit is designed to accompany the study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Resources encourage students to recognize a variety of propaganda techniques and to connect those techniques to media that they can find in their everyday lives. Resources also help students to understand the historical uses of propaganda by governments and political parties to influence public opinion. Resources can be used independently of the novel.