This collection uses primary sources to explore Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The activities, assignments, and lessons included here are designed to help students read and write like artists who constantly take apart old ideas and texts in order to repackage them for the sake of contemporary humor, wisdom, and relevance. The activities introduce new vocabulary for discussing how texts work and play, as well as synthesis, analysis, and creativity. 

The course covers British literature and culture during Queen Victoria’s long reign, 1837-1901. This was the brilliant age of Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson – and many others. It was also the age of urbanization, steam power, class conflict, Darwin, religious crisis, imperial expansion, information explosion, bureaucratization – and much more.

In Writing 241/244, we will concentrate on the study and writing of realistic short fiction, with the purpose of stimulating your creativity, enhancing your analytical abilities, and improving your writing. Students write sketches and stories for class discussion and analysis, usually in the form of small group workshops. Students will also analyze professional stories to understand narrative tools, structural components, and stylistic choices through written analysis and small group discussion.

Catherine Brown, Lecturer in English Literature, compares West Indian writers Derek Walcott and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul on their attitudes towards history and myth. This podcast is part of the Literature, Art and Oxford series from Oxford University.

This collection uses primary sources to explore The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson introduces the idea of green spaces to students.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson introduces students to green spaces and how they can be identified and mapped. The read aloud, vocabulary, and external links are thoroughly sourced and written. This lesson has passed our science review.

POSITIVES:
-This lesson creates a collaborative learning environment for students as an introduction to green spaces and how to create more green spaces.
-This lesson features kinesthetic learning if teachers walk with their students around their school.
-Students will develop a strong connection to self and community through the read aloud of Sofia Valdez, Future Prez.
-This lesson features excellent vocabulary development.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 1 of 6 in our 3rd-5th grade Green Spaces unit.
-It is necessary to procure a copy of Sofia Valdez, Future Prez for this lesson.
-Identify the green spaces on your campus on your own before introducing this lesson to your class to make sure that you have accounted for all the green spaces.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Think-pair-share during read aloud where students can make predictions or answer questions.
-You can pause the read aloud before the text is read for students to make observations and predictions about the story.
-Groups of students with mixed abilities can collaborate on their green spaces map.
-Possible extension: Do a campus tour and have students take notes on green spaces they observe.

Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury is often referred to as William Faulkner's first work of genius. Faulkner's style is characterized by frequent time shifts, narrator shifts, unconventional punctuation and sentence structure, as well as a stream-of-consciousness technique that reveals the inner thoughts of characters to the reader. This curriculum unit will examine narrative structure and time, narrative voice/point of view, and symbolism throughout The Sound and the Fury.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a novel that engages middle school students in thought-provoking discussion, and provides practice in literary analysis skills. The three lessons in this unit all stress textual evidence to support observations and generalizations uncovering the novel's central character traits, symbols and themes.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson asks students to consider how their communities would look and feel with and without green spaces.

SCIENTIST NOTES: The lesson accentuates the benefits of having green spaces vis-a-vis not having them in their community. We recommend this lesson for students to explore the benefits green spaces have on ecosystem health, mental health, and physical health. Students can also explore the maps to gain skills in urban planning. All the materials have been properly cited, and this lesson has passed our credibility process.

POSITIVES:
-Students have agency over their learning when conducting their own research.
-This can be integrated into an ELA class, as students will be reading informational text when conducting their own research.
-This can be integrated into an art class, as students will be drawing multiple maps.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 4 of 6 in our 3rd-5th grade Green Spaces unit.
-It may be helpful to have a mostly blank map of the school campus or community for students to use.
-Students should have some prior experience conducting research. This lesson uses Kiddle, a kid-friendly search engine.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-You may need to preselect resources for some students who need scaffolding when conducting research.
-Some students may need a blank map of the school campus or community. Other students may wish to draw their maps from scratch using blank paper.
-Some students may prefer to draw, type, or use text-to-speech while taking notes.

Set in the Dominican Republic during the rule of Rafael Trujillo, In the Time of the Butterflies fictionalizes historical figures in order to dramatize the Dominican people's heroic efforts to overthrow this dictator's brutal regime. In the following activities, students will examine the actions of the characters in the novel and discuss an all encompassing definition for courage.

This course is designed around analyzing intimate bonds and the permutations of heartbreak. Through the analysis of a set of relations in novels, short stories, poetry, music videos, and live theatre, we will consider the transformative states of the lover’s (un)becoming, for how consciousness is constituted by bonds yet how the lover transcends crisis in the moment of the epiphany that surfaces in love’s very failure; indeed, love itself becomes narcissistically yet optimistically illuminating, even in its oppressive hold.

This is a short presentation about the origins of fiction and storytelling.