British: Lesson Plans

Learn how Shakespeare used the sonnet tradition to enhance his stagecraft by performing a scene from this timeless tragedy.

Study Shakespeare's Hamlet in the context of Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge. The lesson includes activities in which students compare the text of Hamlet to the interpretations of several modern filmmakers.

This lesson sensitizes students to the similarities and differences between cultures by comparing Shakespearean and Bunraku/Kabuki dramas. The focus of this comparison is the complex nature of revenge explored in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Chushingura, or the Treasury of the Loyal Retainers.

George Orwell, is today best known for his last two novels, the anti-totalitarian works Animal Farm and 1984. He was also an accomplished and experienced essayist. Among his most powerful essays is the 1931 autobiographical essay "Shooting an Elephant," which Orwell based on his experience as a police officer in colonial Burma. This lesson plan is designed to help students read Orwell's essay both as a work of literature and as a window into the historical context about which it was written.

Students explore the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell's use of tone, imagery, and poetic form as he attempts to seduce his “Coy Mistress.”

Revised version, updated 2/3/06. This unit explores elements of wonder, distortion, fantasy, and whimsy in Lewis Carroll's adaptation for younger readers of his beloved classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

This unit explores elements of wonder, distortion, fantasy, and whimsy in Lewis Carroll's adaptation for younger readers of his beloved classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Through studying Beatrix Potter's stories and illustrations from the early 1900s and learning about her childhood in Victorian England, students can compare/contrast these with their own world to understand why Potter wrote such simple stories and why she wrote about animals rather than people.

Reading Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess,” students will explore the use of dramatic monologue as a poetic form, where the speaker often reveals far more than intended.

Look into the sources of the Wife’s sermon on women’s rights to learn how real women lived during the Middle Ages.

Students explore Lewis Carroll’s imaginative visions of childhood, captured in his photography and in the words and art of his Alice in Wonderland stories. Students also compare and contrast Carroll’s Victorian view of childhood to that of Romantic poet and printer William Blake.

In this lesson, students analyze, compare, and contrast two famous but different poems about death. Students will study poetry form (elegy and villanelle) and poetic devices such as repetition and tone.

Trace the elements of myth and history in the world of the Round Table.
Date Revised: 06/22/06

Through their interpretation of primary documents that reflect Victorian ideals, students can learn the cultural expectations for and limitations placed on Victorian women and then contemplate the writer Charlotte Brontë's position in that context. Then, through an examination of the opening chapters of Jane Eyre, students will evaluate Jane's status as an unconventional Victorian heroine.

Curriculum Unit overview. Modernist poetry often is difficult for students to analyze and understand. A primary reason students feel a bit disoriented when reading a modernist poem is that the speaker himself is uncertain about his or her own ontological bearings. The rise of cities; profound technological changes in transportation, architecture, and engineering; a rising population that engendered crowds and chaos in public spaces; and a growing sense of mass markets often made individuals feel less individual and more alienated, fragmented, and at a loss in their daily worlds.

Lesson 1: Understanding the Context of Modernist Poetry
Lesson 2: Thirteen Ways of Reading a Modernist Poem
Lesson 3: Navigating Modernism with J. Alfred Prufrock

Jane Austen's classic novel offers insights into life in early nineteenth-century England. This lesson, focusing on class and the status of women, teaches students how to use a work of fiction as a primary source in the study of history.

While teaching some of the formal terms used to describe sonnets will be one of the aims of this lesson, our starting point and central focus throughout will be learning to appreciate the sounds of poetry.

Striking examples of poetic "pictures"-not just vivid images but the entire mental picture conjured up by a poet-are to be found in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes. As they explore the means by which Tennyson and Noyes create these compelling pictures in words, students will also learn the critical terminology to analyze and describe a variety of poetic techniques and will have an opportunity to create their own pictures in words.

The historian and literary critic Paul Fussell has noted in The Great War and Modern Memory that, "Dawn has never recovered from what the Great War did to it." With dawn as a common symbol in poetry, it is no wonder that, like a new understanding of dawn itself, a comprehensive body of "World War I Poetry" emerged from the trenches as well.

Conduct an experiment in literary interpretation with little-known specimens of Victorian verse.

Students are often gleeful to discover that their reading homework involves only a few short poems. Yet the attentive student realizes that carefully reading a poem involves as much work as reading a short story, article, or passage from a novel. This EDSITEment lesson teaches students how to read a poem so that they are prepared, rather than simply present, for class discussion.

Similes are used often in literature, appearing in every genre from poetry to prose and from epics to essays. Utilized by writers to bring their literary imagery to life, similes are an important component of reading closely and appreciating literature.

During the Victorian Era, British author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was both respected as a journalist and lauded as "The Poet of the [British] Empire." In this lesson, students will use interactive materials to learn about Rudyard Kipling's life and times, read an illustrated version of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," and learn how Kipling effectively uses personification by mixing fact and fiction.

During the Victorian Era, British author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was both respected as a journalist and lauded as "The Poet of the [British] Empire." In this lesson, students will read an illustrated version of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," examine how Kipling and visual artists mix observation with imagination to create remarkable works, and follow similar principles to create a work of their own.

Shakespeare's preeminence as a dramatist rests in part on his capacity to create vivid metaphors and images that embody simple and powerful human emotions. This lesson is designed to help students understand how Shakespeare's language dramatizes one such emotion: fear.

Students search an online version of Shakespeare's Macbeth for clues to the motives behind Macbeth's precipitous descent into evil.

By means of group performances, writing exercises, and online search activities, students learn about the sometimes dangerous and destructive powers of language, particularly when wielded by such an eloquent and unscrupulous character as Shakespeare's Iago.

Arthur, Camelot, Gawain, a challenge, a perilous journey, a beheading, an enchantment, and a shape-shifter are the ingredients of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For the modern reader, Sir Gawain's tale is riveting even without understanding its symmetry or cultural and historical context. Viewed through the lens of the medieval thinker, reading this Arthurian tale becomes a rich, multi-layered experience.

In this lesson, students will discover how historical events gradually merged with fantasy to create the colorful tales we enjoy today. This Lesson Plan revised: 12/30/2005

Examine the relationship between science and the supernatural in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the “horror stories” of Hawthorne and Poe.

After encountering visually stunning examples of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and engaging with the literary conventions of Anglo-Saxon poetry, students will be prepared to study Beowulf. Dispelling stereotypes about the so-called “dark ages,” this lesson helps students learn about the production of early manuscripts and the conventions of Anglo-Saxon poetry, solve online riddles, and write riddles of their own.

The activities in this lesson invite students to focus on the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to describe and analyze their conflicts, and then to watch how those conflicts get resolved.