The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.

A challenging lesson on writing a book for children awaits your fifth-graders. They must use laptops, document cameras, and a projector to create and present an original piece of writing. A checklist that has all of the requirements for...

Are you just about to teach persuasion in your class? If so, you should consider this short unit. In small groups, learners create a product, develop a magazine ad for the product, and pitch this product to the class using a visual...

This scripted activity suggests using the journalist’s five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) to teach readers how to summarize a story and to how to distinguish between significant and supporting details. A template and rubric are...

Grow an understanding of short story with a well-sequenced plan built around an Academy Award-winning short film. Class members explore the elements of an effective short story, and practice writing their own. They also watch the short...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Students survey Neoclassical art and create a narrative based on their analyses. Focused questions and relevant background information provided by the Getty Museum provides a great foundation for students to understand art techniques as...

Ambition is the keyword of a lesson plan that focuses on the contributions made by famous female artists. Specifically looking at European artists, Luisa Roldan and Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, scholars examine a piece of their work...

What makes a good leader? Use the curriculum guide for William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to help scholars answer that question. Pupils research the play's historical context and other background information before engaging in...

Learners explore language arts by writing their own poems. In this haiku lesson, students investigate the Japanese culture and their beautiful music, poetry and art. Learners count the syllables in every line of a haiku poem and write...

African-American history is an integral part of what America is. Learners examine important events, read informational texts, and create quilts depicting specific eras in African-American history. Each image created for the quilt will be...

Play a vocabulary game with words from an article about Savion Glover's contribution to the film "Happy Feet." Then, small groups of young scholars design and create original movie advertisements using vivid vocabulary to give Glover the...

Integrate history, math, and art into a study of The Grapes of Wrath with a series of activities that ask learners to investigate the social, political, economic, and environmental factors at play during the 1930s. Designed to be used...

A lesson all about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad introduces scholars to African American spirituals. By way of reading, speaking, and listening, learners discover, analyze, and decode African American spirituals. They...

Students explore descriptive writing by creating headstones. In this memorial lesson, students utilize an 11" x 17" piece of paper to create a cemetery headstone memorializing a word rather than a person. Students decorate their...

Students explore the patterns of text structure to anticipate the kind of information that a reading might present. The lesson examines some of the components of reading writing and using nonfiction.

How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...

Learners view a wordless comic before using it as a story starter. They access a story that uses the same characters at a website in order to better understand the nature of the characters. They write a story inspired by the comic and...

Students write letters to penpals. In this geography/literacy instructional activity, students become penpals with a classroom in England to learn about customs and society across the ocean. Flat Stanley by Will Holton is read aloud,...

Students explore fictional characters. In this fictional characters lesson plan, students hear information about a character then ask and answer questions. Students also answer true/false questions about the character and make a mini...

Class members are presented with the image of a painting and asked to record their first impressions and analysis. They then research the time period in which it was painted and discuss how their research impacted their first impression...

Historically, members of the upper class provide plenty of fodder for comedic writers. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is no exception, and a study guide for the classic play discusses some of the Victorian social...

A close study of two works of art provides the introduction to this cross-curricular writing assignment. After comparing the clothing, facial expressions, body language, setting, and color in the two 19th century paintings Tissout’s...

Learners read a book and observe the wind and how it affects the environment. They explore what wind does by looking at pictures, reading a book, and by completing an experiment. They will use their own knowledge of the wind and compare...