Identifying the tone of a piece of writing or the author's attitude toward the subject matter can be difficult for learners. Simplify the process with a lesson that begins with skits, moves to songs and their lyrics, and then to passages...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

General music students learn about the history of popular American music by creating and performing a one-act musical. After researching and creating an American Musical timeline, class members write a song with lyrics using Jam Studio,...

Music can help us to access memories and events in a meaningful way, and Francis Scott Key used specific words to convey what he had seen and felt when writing what would become America's national anthem. Help your class connect to...

Some enslaved people decided to run for their liberation. Using lyrics of songs they sang, young historians look at these anthems of freedom. An assessment asks them to write the story of escape from the perspective of an enslaved...

To continue their study of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the beginning of the civil rights movement, class members watch the YouTube video of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" as an introduction to an examination of...

Reading Mary Pope Osborne's Civil War on Sunday? Here's a packet crammed with activities, exercises, reading guides, and project suggestions. A must-have for your curriculum library.