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.

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.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary and informational texts, focusing on how authors use word choice and rhetoric to develop ideas, and advance their points of view and purposes. The texts in this module represent varied voices, experiences, and perspectives, but are united by their shared exploration of the effects of prejudice and oppression on identity construction. Each of the module texts is a complex work with multiple central ideas and claims that complement the central ideas and claims of other texts in the module. All four module texts offer rich opportunities to analyze authorial engagement with past and present struggles against oppression, as well as how an author’s rhetoric or word choices strengthen the power and persuasiveness of the text.

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

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary texts, focusing on the authors’ choices in developing and relating textual elements such as character development, point of view, and central ideas while also considering how a text’s structure conveys meaning and creates aesthetic impact. Additionally, students learn and practice narrative writing techniques as they examine the techniques of the authors whose stories students analyze in the module.|

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

Over the course of Module 12.2, students practice and refine their informative writing and speaking and listening skills through formative assessments, and apply these skills in the Mid-Unit and End-of-Unit Assessments as well as the Module 12.2 Performance Assessment. Module 12.2 consists of two units: 12.2.1 and 12.2.2. In 12.2.1, students first read “Ideas Live On,” a speech that Benazir Bhutto delivered in 2007. Next, students analyze the complex ideas and language in Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience.”

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

In this 12th grade module, students read, discuss, and analyze four literary texts, focusing on the development of interrelated central ideas within and across the texts. |The mains texts in this module include|A Streetcar Named Desire|by Tennessee Williams, “A Daily Joy to Be Alive” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol, and|The Namesake|by Jhumpa Lahiri. As students discuss these texts, they will analyze complex characters who struggle to define and shape their own identities. The characters’ struggles for identity revolve around various internal and external forces including: class, gender, politics, intersecting cultures, and family expectations.|

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

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 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.

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

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.