Alice Walker's "Everyday Use:" A Lesson in Characterization
The short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker helps teach students about characterization and conflict. Once the class has read this …
Continue ReadingShowing items from High School English Lesson Plans - Grades 9-12
Lesson Plan: Create a Grandparents' Journal
Delight the elders of the family with a letter writing project. Get a journal and pass it back and forth between the Grandparents and teenagers in the …
Continue ReadingBean Trees: Multiple Choice Quiz covering chapters 13-17
Don’t have time to create your own quiz? Here’s one that’s easy to administer and easy to grade. The Bean Trees Quiz, Chapters …
Continue ReadingLesson Plan on Writing Paragraphs: Help Students Improve Paragraph Quality
Remember the last time you graded essays and you swore if one more student turned in an essay with one gigantic paragraph, you would kill him?
Continue ReadingTeaching How to Write a Conclusion: Don't let a Perfectly Good Essay Go to Waste. Teach Students How to Write a Good Conclusion.
Tired of being let down by lame endings? So am I. Instead of complaining, I wrote this lesson plan to stamp out lame endings forever.
Continue ReadingTeaching Transitions in Writing: Tips for Helping high School Students Write Coherently With Better Transitions
If the reader is confused, it’s the writers fault. Clear up the confusion with clear transitions.
Continue ReadingCreate a Comedic Skit: Group Writing Activity
Help students build writing and team work skills by presenting a lesson about writing a comedic skit. Even students who don’t normally like to write …
Continue ReadingDetermining Meaning from Word Parts Lesson Plan: Word Parts and Their Meanings
When you tell students to look words up in a dictionary, they never do. They think bad words about you. I prefer teaching them how to analyze word …
Continue ReadingTeaching Revision in the Writing Process: How to Make the Middle Clear and Concise
Seeing the unfocused writing of my students, I knew I had work to do. Teaching revision in the writing process isn’t easy. I had to devise a …
Continue ReadingLesson Plan: Teaching Who and Whom
There are no other two words in the English language that high school students like to misuse: using who when they mean whom and whom when they mean …
Continue ReadingA lesson plan to teach students the elements of literature by having them create their own fairy tales
This is the fourth part of a six part series on fairytales. Students, in groups, will create their own version of a fairytale.
Continue ReadingTypes of Context Clues: Different Types of Clues Explained With Examples to Help Students Determine Word Meanings
My legions of fans (my three year old son, my dog, and my goldfish) have been asking for a follow up article on using context clues to determine word …
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