Title: Lupita Manana
Author: Patricia Beatty
Publisher: Harper Trophy, NY
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0380732475
Audience: 7th/ 8th Grades
Synopsis:
To help her poverty-stricken family, 13 year-old Lupita enters California as an
illegal alien to work in order to earn money for her family.
Activities:
1. Have students write a postcard to a friend about this book; to the
author; to a character in the book; write as if you were the character or
author and write to yourself.
2. Have students draw a map of Lupita's trip
3. Have students write about a story on paper; then passes it to another
who responds to what they said; each subsequent respondent "talks"
to/about all those before.
Title: The Color Purple
Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Harvest Books; Harvest edition (May 28, 2003)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0156028352
Audience: 12th Grade
Synopsis:
A feminist novel about an abused and uneducated black woman's struggle for
empowerment, the novel was praised for the depth of its female characters and
for its eloquent use of Black English vernacular.
Activities:
1. Show the film version by Stephen Spielberg.
2. Have students research and create presentations on the life of Alice
Walker.
3. Have students write reviews of the film.
Title: The Tempest
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Washington Square Press; Washington edition (May 1, 1994)
(Folger)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0671722905
Audience: 9 – 12th Grade
Synopsis:
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most suggestive, yet most elusive plays. It
is a magical romance, yet deeply embedded in seventeenth-century debates
about authority and power. This edition attends to the implications of Prospero's
magic, his political and paternal ambitions, and the controversial issue of his
"colonialist" control of Caliban. The Tempest was also Shakespeare's response
to the new opportunities offered by the Blackfriars theatre, and careful attention is
accordingly given to the play's dramatic form, stagecraft, and use of music and
spectacle, to demonstrate its uniquely experimental nature.
Activities:
1. Have students read Edward Albee’s Seascape as a comparison work.
2. Have students learn monologues from the script and present them to
the class.
3. Have students create costume drafts for Caliban. They must explain
why they have come up with their ideas. Then show them pictures from
past performances.
Title: The House on Mango Street
Author: Sandra Cisneros
Publisher: Vintage; Reissue edition (April 3, 1991)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0679734775
Audience: 7th/8th Grade
Synopsis:
Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, Sandra Cisneros's
greatly admired novel is that of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of
Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and
grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities
across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of
coming-of-age classics.
Activities:
1. Exercise on Symbolism: Define and Find Symbolism
2. Use the Internet to Explore the Novel
3. Write a Paper Describing How You Are an Individual
Title: Dr. Faustus
Author: Christopher Marlowe
Publisher: Dover Publications; Dover edition
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0486282082
Audience: 11th Grade
Synopsis: Faustus sells his soul to the Devil and learns lessons in the process
Activities:
1. Show the students some pictures of renaissance costumes and then
have them illustrate drafts for costumes for the “seven deadly sins” in
groups of two/three. A brief synopsis describing the “sin” should be
included with each illustration.
2. Show clips from the film Bedazzled and discuss how this film
compares to the Marlowe play.
3.
Have students write obituaries for Dr. Faustus.
Title: Antigone
Author: Sophocles
Publisher: Oxford University Press; New Ed edition (August 1, 1998)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0192835882
Audience: 10 – 12th Grades
Synopsis: In this Greek tragedy, Antigone sacrifices her life in martyrdom in
order to make a point about her brother’s burial.
Activities:
1. Read Anoullie’s Antigone and compare the differences between the
two plays.
2. Have students research Antigone’s family tree.
3. Adapt this myth for a younger audience; make into children’s books or
dramatic adaptation on video or live.
Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Dover Publications; (July 1, 1990)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0486264645
Audience: 9th- 12th Grades
Synopsis: Dark allegory describes the narrator’s journey up the Congo River
and his meeting with, and fascination by, Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who
dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. Considered by many Conrad’s
finest, most enigmatic story.
Activities:
1. Have students make a list of a certain number of questions they
have about a particular character or aspect of the book; use these
as the basis for class discussion.
2. Have students take a 3x5 card and summarize what happened on
one side; on the other, analyze the importance of what happened
and the reasons it happened.
3. Have students write each other about the book as you read it,
having a written conversation about the book.
Title: Antigone
Author: Jean Anouille
Publisher: Methuen Drama (June 1, 2001)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0413695409
Audience: 10th – 12th Grades
Synopsis: A modern twist on the Greek Classic, Antigone
Activities:
1. Use the story as the basis for a court trial.
1. Read the myth of Antigone to the students. Discuss the differences in
the modern version and the myth.
2. Individually or in groups, create a storyboard for the play.
Title: Electra
Author: Sophocles
Publisher: Oxford University Press; New Ed edition (August 1, 1998)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0192835882
Audience: 10th – 12th Grades
Synopsis: The Greek Tragedy in which Electra and her brother avenge their
father’s death by the hands of their mother
Activities:
1. Put a character or other word in the middle of a web; have students
brainstorm associations while you write them down; then have them make
connections between ideas and discuss or writing about them.
3. Have groups research the family tree of Electra and then create a
diagram.
4. After reading a story, pair up with others and tell the story as a group,
recalling it in order, piecing it together, and clarifying for each other
when one gets lost.
Title: Mourning Becomes Electra
Author: Eugene O’Neill
Publisher: Vintage; Reissue edition (October 31, 1995)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 0679763961
Audience: 10th – 12th Grades
Synopsis: A modern twist on the Greek Tragedy of Electra
Activities:
1. Compare and contrast this play to Electra by Sophocles.
2. Have students choose their favorite monologue from the play and then
explain what it is about and why it is their favorite.
3. Have students make a list of a certain number of questions they have
about a particular character or aspect of the book; use these as the
basis for class discussion.
Title: Black Boy
Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: Perennial Classics; 1st Perennial Classics edition
Genre: Autobiographical Novel
ISBN: 0060929782
Audience: 9th grade
Synopsis: Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted
narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim
Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming off age during a
particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about
what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.
Activities:
1. Have students write a page about what it would feel like to be in the
author’s shoes.
2. Have students research what was going on historically at the time in
which this novel was written.
3. Have class keep a running journal as they read this novel.
Title: Passing
Author: Nella Larsen
Publisher: Penguin Books (February 1, 2003)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0142437271
Audience: 10th – 12th
Synopsis: Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious,
she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has
severed all ties to her past. Clare's childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as lightskinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, but
refuses to acknowledge the racism that continues to constrict her family's
happiness. A chance encounter forces both women to confront the lies they have
told others-and the secret fears they have buried within themselves.
Activities:
1. Have students write poems about passing.
2. Have students define passing to the best of their knowledge before
reading the book. After reading the book they will re-read their
definitions and refine them with any newly acquired knowledge or
thoughts.
3. Have students create diagrams of the characters including illustrations
and written character traits.
Title: Native Son
Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: Perennial, (September 1, 1998)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0060929804
Audience: 10th – 12th
Synopsis: Bigger Thomas struggles against society in order to find himself and
meaning in his life. In the course of a week, he murders two women and is
hunted by the police. Upon his capture and trial, he discovers what it is to be
human, to be recognized as an individual, and what it is like to find humanity in
others.
Activities:
1. Have students create a collage regarding this novel.
2. Have students research Richard Wright on the Internet, for class
presentations.
3. Have students create a timeline of events happening in the book along
with historical happenings (including legal trials) in society at the time
of the novel.
Title: Holes
Author: Louis Sachar
Publisher: Yearling; Reprint edition (May 9, 2000)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0440414806
Audience: 7th – 8th Grades
Synopsis: Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his nogood-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed
generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention
center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys "build character"
by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It
doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement
going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden
is looking for something. Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and
darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment--and redemption.
Activities:
1. Have students write postcards from the camp to their parents.
2. Have students write one page telling of a situation in which they were
not exactly truthful.
3. View the film as a class and compare/contrast the film to the book
afterwards.
Title: Angels In America
Author: Tony Kushner
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group; (November 1, 2003)
Genre: Play
ISBN: 1559362316
Audience: 10th – 12th Grades
Synopsis: Tony Kushner's Angels in America is that rare entity: a work for the
stage that is profoundly moving yet very funny, highly theatrical yet steeped in
traditional literary values, and most of all deeply American in its attitudes and
political concerns. In two full-length plays--Millennium Approaches and
Perestroika--Kushner tells the story of a handful of people trying to make sense
of the world. Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and
become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife,
Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with
that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative
ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet
while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.
Activities:
1. View and discuss the HBO film
2. Have students write about how it would change the story if a certain
character had made a different decision earlier in the story.
3. Have students describe a character as a psychologist or recruiting
officer might: what are they like? Examples? Why are they like that?
Title: The Nightingale
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Publisher: Penguin Books; New Ed edition (November 1, 2000)
Genre: Poem
ISBN: 0140424296
Audience: 11th – 12th Grades
Poem:
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
Bur* hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
(And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself,
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain.
And many a poet echoes the conceit;
Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretched his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
By sun or moon-light, to the influxes
Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!
And I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales; and far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's songs,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all-Stirring the air with such an harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
Whose dewy leaflets are but half-disclosed,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.
A most gentle Maid,
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve
(Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate
To something more than Nature in the grove)
Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,
That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and those wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
Many a nightingale perch giddily
On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.
Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes.--That strain again!
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well
The evening-star; and once, when he awoke
In most distressful mood (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream),
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,
And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,
Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!-It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate joy.--Once more, farewell,
Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends!
farewell.
Activities:
1. Compare and contrast to the poem The Nightingale by Sir Philip Sydney
2. Have students create “mood music” by compiling songs onto CD’s or on
tapes.
3. Have students create a short story from the poem.
Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books ed edition (March 16, 1998)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 038549081X
Audience: 11th Grade
Synopsis: Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the
home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose
signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed
to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander
makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other
Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her
husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had
a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....
Activities:
1. Have students write a story or journal from the perspective of characters
with no real role in the story and show us what they see and think from
their perspective.
2. Have students talk or write about how it would change the story if a certain
character had made a different decision earlier in the story
3. Have one student start the reading and goes until they wish to pass; they
call on whomever they wish and that person picks up and continues
reading for as long as they wish.
Title: The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
Publisher: Ivy Books; (April 30, 1990)
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 0804106304
Audience: 9th – 12th Grade
Synopsis: Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with
the four winds depending on who is "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese
women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play
mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call
themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to
gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for
something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years
later the stories and history continue.
Activities:
1. Create a mandala with many levels to connect different aspects of a book,
its historical time, and culture.
2. Host a talk show: students play the host, author, and cast of characters;
allow questions from the audience.
3. Have students keep a diary as if you were a character in the story. Write
down events that happen during the story and reflect on how they affected
the character and why.
Title: Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day
Author: William Shakespeare
Genre: Poem
Audience: 10th – 12th Grades
The Poem:
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Activities:
1. Have students use the winter imagery to describe a person.
2. Students will create their own sonnets.
3. Have students create an individual or class collage around themes in the
poem.
Title: We Real Cool; The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel from Blacks
Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher: Chicago, Ill.: Third World Press, 1991
Genre: Poem
ISBN: 0883781050
Audience: 10th - 12th Grades
Poem:
THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Activities:
1. Pick five adjectives for the poem/character(s), and explain how they
apply.
2. Have students research Gwendolyn Brooks and choose another play
by her to read to the class.
3. Re-write the poem from a different point of view.