Reading & Literature
"... Gale In Context: Literature provides the autonomy and context my high school students need to connect with the stories they’re reading. They’ll befriend Offred and navigate the changing world of adolescence with Esperanza Cordero. They’ll be unnerved by Shirley Jackson and get inspired by Malala. Literature is a comprehensive digital resource that guides my students through the story, providing critical analysis, related multimedia content, and helpful explanations. "
Learn how to curate digital content from your Gale resources to create text sets and support research projects. Utilizing a variety of workflow tools, in this session, we’ll explore best practices to share ready-to-go content with students and teachers.
Poetry
"How Do I Know When a Poem Is Finished" as part of Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets' educational project for National Poetry Month 2015.
Sylvia walks through the "Take-Five" activity, a five-minute strategy for reading a short poem together.
Have you heard of “book spine poetry?” It’s a kind of poetry that you don’t really write from scratch – instead, you “find” it by arranging book titles to make a poem. This type of poem can be serious or funny, just like in regular poetry.
What exactly makes a poem … a poem? Poets themselves have struggled with this question, often using metaphors to approximate a definition. Is a poem a little machine? A firework? An echo? A dream? Melissa Kovacs shares three recognizable characteristics of most poetry.
It was important to Kwame Alexander that the poetry in The Crossover visually expressed how the words should sound and be heard
Interviewed by Maike Wohlfahrt at versfest berlin 2017
"Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the study of great poetry by offering free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life."
April is National Poetry Month
Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 18, 2024. Consider participating - here are some ideas:
Select a poem and share it on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem.
Print a poem from the Poem in Your Pocket Day PDF and draw an image from the poem in the white space, or use the instructions on pages 57–58 of the PDF to make an origami swan.
Record a video of yourself reading a poem, then share it on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or another social media platform you use.
Email a poem to your friends, family, neighbors, or local government leaders.
Schedule a video chat and read a poem to your loved ones.
Add a poem to your email footer.
Read a poem out loud from your porch, window, backyard or outdoor space.
Shakespeare
Whose Ghost is it Anyway?
A multi-institutional resource documenting Shakespeare in his own time.
The Folger catalog contains bibliographic records for books, manuscripts, art, and objects in the Folger collection (both physical and digital).
Using Primary Sources with Literature
Using a petition for bail from accused witches in 1692, students gained knowledge from the perspective of an incarcerated victim would be particularly powerful—it provides a new perspective that the play, for the most part, lacks.
The major text in this unit is Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. One chapter in the book focuses on the character “H Black,” who is arrested for a minor charge and is sentenced to hard labor working as a leased convict in a coal mine in Alabama. The purpose of the lesson is to help students gain a greater understanding of the convict leasing system.
Local Journalism & Newspapers
Wealthier and urban communities have access to more local news, a disparity that’s widened as local news outlets shutter across the country. More than half of U.S. counties have only one news outlet or less, and counties with an average household income of $54,000 or less are more likely to lack local news sources, according to the latest report by the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University.