In Cold Blood Body Biographies (begins on page 23) Statement of Purpose: Body Biographies can help students to explore the complexity of character within a novel. This activity will allow students to explore personality, physical appearance, motivation, etc. of various characters during reading. Because In Cold Blood has such
interesting and varied characters this activity will be particularly engaging for students. It
will also provide an opportunity for them to share the things that they are learning with
their peers.

In this lesson, high school students look critically at the literary work "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe and its 1961 film interpretation. They use prediction strategies to form and refine their opinions about the story line progression in each work. They read the short story, screen the film, discuss reactions to both works, and plan and write a persuasive essay analyzing the validity of the film interpretation. This lesson is ideally suited for students who have experience with persuasive writing, and it can be adapted to work with any literature-film pairing.

This LearnZillion video models how to select significant and relevant evidence by selecting examples from a written text. The video reviews the writing process and provides an example thesis based on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and the development of concurrent themes. The process of choosing pieces of texual evidence that best support the thesis will be modeled.

In this lesson student will perform a close reading of a scene from Shakespeare or other complex text (preferably a play). Student will edit the text by evaluating main idea, plot elements, tone, etc. Then, they will practice and perform their scene for their peers.

Students will create a visual character map examining connections between characters and developing inferences about character motivation in Shakespeare's . The resource contains links to the Folger edition of  as well as the handout on Constructing Character Connections.

This resource blends nicely with the 1920s and F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby. The movie is a fictional exploration of Humanities in this time. It also provides benefits on at least three levels. It allows students to visualize famous writers and artists who worked in Paris during the 1920s. The story itself is valuable, raising the issue of how best to use the past. It can also serve to acquaint students with the City of Paris, one of the great cities of the world.

What is scary, and why does it fascinate us? How do writers and storytellers scare us? This lesson plan invites students to answer these questions by exploring their own scary stories and scary short stories and books. The lesson culminates in a Fright Fair, where students share scary projects that they have created, including posters, multimedia projects, and creative writing.

Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.

This is an excellent way to assess students' understanding of a multitude of literary and comprehension elements when reading The House on Mango Street. It provides excellent examples as to what students can do as far as activities as well.

Using Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat, students learn a simplified method of analyzing a literary work through psychoanalytical criticism. Students identify plot and theme, and then identify characters from the story with their psychological personalities (Id, Ego, and Superego). Students then develop an argument supporting the character identification. Finally, using explicit textual evidence, students write an analytical essay supporting their position.

This lesson provides an introduction to the language and poetics of the epic poem Beowulf. Although this lesson assumes students will read Beowulf in translation, it introduces students to the poem’s original Old English and explains the relationship between Old, Middle, and Modern English. Students are introduced to the five characters in the Old English alphabet that are no longer used in Modern English. As a class, they translate a short, simple phrase from Old English, and then listen to a passage from the poem being read in Old English. Next, students are introduced to some poetic devices important to Beowulf. They learn about alliteration by reading an excerpt from W. H. Auden’s modern English poem “The Age of Anxiety,” then listen for alliteration in the Old English version of a passage from Beowulf. Finally, students explore the poetic functions of kennings, compounds, and formulas in Beowulf.

This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used in the academy.

This Ted-Ed video, which can be used as a part of a writing lesson in the literature classroom, addresses the idea of finding "deeper meaning" in a literary work. It is an engaging instructional video that takes the perspective of a student who is a beginner in literary analysis writing and needs help understanding how to read with insight and acknowledge complex ideas in their work. Using two example texts (Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Morrison's ), the narrator helps students understand how to think about literature analytically prior to writing about it.

Using Beloved as a model of a work with multiple narrative perspectives, students use a visualizing activity and close reading to consider ways in which subjective values shape contradictory representations.

I include this assignment in my 11-12 Grade Native American Literature class. I usually introduce this unit after students have read the short story "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona," by Sherman Alexie (Form his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven). The story (along with pieces of his other short stories) was the inspiration for the 1998 film Smoke Signals, one of the first authentic films to examine the humor, pain, loss and struggle of reservation life.After reading the story and watching the film, students write about what makes the film authentic and how forgiveness plays into the ability to move on.We then watch the documentary film Reel Injun (2009), chronicling the evolution of Native American portrayals in film. Next, students have the opportunity to discuss the attributes of authentic Native American depictions in film and what aspects of Native culture they would like to see in film.Finally, we finish the unit by looking at the impact of stereotypes in film, especially children's films, and students watch the Disney film Pocahantas (2005) through the lens of a movie critic and write a movie review based on the film, focusing on the authenticity of racial and cultural portrayals.Video Lesson: The Evolution of Native American Representations in Film

Show Me by SCC English is a site that offers close reading/annotating of passages from classic literature including The Great Gatsby; MacBeth; King Lear; Hamlet; Pride and Prejudice. 
This resource is useful for modeling annotating a text for deeper meaning.

SlaveryStories.org is an open source project that anyone can can contribute to. It presents various slave narrtives in an easy to find and visably appealing mannter.  It is a good source for literature circles, historical comparisons and narrtive examples.

Having explored how Robert Hayden uses consonance, assonance, and alliteration to illustrate a complex relationship between a father and a son in "Those Winter Sundays," students engage in a variety of vocal activities and performance techniques based on word sounds. Students then prepare a recitation of the poem for small group performances and compare their interpretative choices as part of the reflection process.