The Kennedy Center: ARTSEDGE — the National Arts and Education Network

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Acting Up, A Melodrama
In this lesson, the students practice some melodramatic movement.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Adapting a Musical
This lesson explores the implications of developing a musical from a literary text or an historical event, and includes suggestions for immersing students into the creative process of building a musical.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: All Around the Baseball Field
Students construct a mock baseball field and from there explore the sport of baseball through art, movement, and sound

Grades K-2 Lesson: Animal Habitats
Pre-readers are introduced to animal habitats through story, song, and dramatic play using children’s books

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Art from Tragedy: Remembering 9/11
Students will interview their peers about their memories of September 11th, 2001, and use those memories to craft a one-act play for performance

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Art Show with the Masters
Research information on artists' lives and works and prepare works of art based on their understanding of the artists, their time and place in history, and their works.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Arthur Miller and The Crucible
This lesson examines the consequences of personal conscience in conflict with rigid societal perceptions of what is "right" in human behavior as articulated in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Arts of the Gilded Age
Learn about and discuss characteristics of the Gilded Age. Using books, internet and other media, research the various fine and performing art forms popular during that time period.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Broken Worlds
This lesson provides a variety of options for conducting comparative analysis between Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

Grades 6-8 Lesson: A Character Life Box
This language arts lesson offers a hands-on opportunity for students to understand characterization in literature and to connect historical and contemporary culture

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Characterization in Literature and Theater
In this lesson, students explore various methods authors use to create effective characters.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Children of War
This lesson explores the realities and effects of war on children by examining diaries, journals, and letters written by children during times of war

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Chivalry and Courtly Love
Explore the Arthurian codes of chivalry and courtly love in art, modern films, books, and poetry. Examine the way in which these ideals have influenced modern concepts.

Grade 5 Lesson: Civil War Letters
Using letters written during the Civil War students develop an understanding of the message of the letters. They will create a dramatic reading based on their letter.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Counting Crows
Students will learn the meaning of Aesop's fable, "The Crow and the Pitcher," blending math and art with literature and film

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Creating Characters
Students examine character as a significant element of fiction, learning methods of characterization, identify and critique

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Elements of Fables
This lesson focuses on describing the general literary elements in fables. In this particular lesson, students will recognize the key elements of a fable (moral, character, and figurative language).

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Elements of Myth
How can myths help to explain nature and science? Students will explore these themes in this lesson. Students will read and explore several myths, identifying the elements of this literary form.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Escape from Reality: Miró and Surrealism
This lesson will introduce the history and concepts of the Surrealist movement

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Eugene O'Neill on Page and Stage
Continue the exploration of "Puritanism" as an influence on the development of modern American drama by focusing on elements of narrative, theme and characterization.

Grade 5 Lesson: Exploring American Tall Tales
Students will explore the common elements of folktales and tall tales while learning how these tales built the spirit of the American people

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Exploring Russian Folktales
Students are introduced to the genre of folktales and engage in a study of several Russian folktales. They are asked to read the tales aloud, and then to fill in a chart about each one.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Exploring A Streetcar Named Desire
Students study setting, plot, and character development in Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire and discuss its impact on American theater.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Fancy Fencing
Stage-fighting, and especially sword-fighting, is important to the plot of many Shakespearean plays. In theatre, fights are based on precise choreography.

Grade 5 Lesson: Finding Your Own Frog Prince
Students will use a traditional tale, “The Frog Prince,” and Jon Scieszka’s variation of it, The Frog Prince Continued, to create improvised scenes and then a book for a mini-musical.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Fractured Families in American Drama
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long Day's Journey into Night, explore the tension, tragedy, heartbreak, and love within flawed and fractured families.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Get Dramatic: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
In this lesson students will explore the concepts behind the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle slogan through theater

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Giving Voice to History
Students will understand a somber period in American history. During World War II, the U.S. government ordered more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to detainment camps.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Harriet Tubman: Dancing on the Freedom Trail
In this lesson, students are introduced to the emotional struggles Tubman faced as she helped slaves escape and travel north along the Underground Railroad.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Immigrating to America
Students will learn what it was like for new immigrants to come through Ellis Island—a symbolic heart of American immigration—at the turn of the 20th century

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Inspired by Muses, Graces and Fates
Muses of ancient Greece inspired poets, playwrights, dancers, actors, musicians, and scientists. Graces added life to a party and the Fates determined a life’s destiny.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: It's All in the Translation
In this lesson students will examine the important role translation plays in interpreting the dramatic literature and theater of the ancient Greeks.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: King Arthur: Man or Legend
In this lesson, students will learn about the legend of King Arthur as depicted in stories, poems, and artwork

Grade 5 Lesson: A Light in the Storm: A Personal Look at the Civil War
Create a historical timeline and personal event timeline based on the historical fiction book and play A Light in the Storm and its main character, Amelia Martin.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: A Listening Doll
Create a listening doll in the tradition of the Native American storyteller dolls

Grades K-2 Lesson: Masks and Aesop's Fables
This multi-media visual and language arts lesson offers intellectual, creative, and interpretive opportunities through use of books, music and the internet

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Mountain Creation: A Drama Exploration
Students examine a poem about mountain creation from a Native American perspective and watching a scientifically-accurate film about mountain formation

Grade 5 Lesson: Moving Tales
Students practice using their bodies to communicate through movement, improvisation, and pantomime games. Groups then read and interpret an assigned Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Noh Theater
In learning about the history, theatrical elements, music, dance, and costuming, of Noh Plays students are also comparing and contrasting these to the other theater elements

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Oh, Say Can You See…
Students will learn about the history behind the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Performance Essay
By investigating Shakespeare through both an analytical and theatrical lens, students achieve a much deeper understanding of his work.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Pioneer America: Journey West
In this lesson, students will learn about the early pioneers in America and their motivations for moving West

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Pioneer America: Legendary Westerners
In this lesson, students will work in pairs to research legendary westerners

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Pioneer America: Pioneer Living
In this lesson, students will learn about what life was like for early American pioneers

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Playing with Puns
This theater and language arts lesson offers intellectual, creative and interpretive opportunities. Students will analyze and compare the puns and word play in selected scenes

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Plotting the Story
Students examine plot as a significant element of fiction. They distinguish plot from narrative to gain a firm understanding of a plot’s function within a story

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Puppets on the Move: China and the Silk Road
Through map-making, research, and class discussions, students will gain an understanding of the dynamics of trade in China along the Silk Road

Grades 9-12 Lesson: A Question of Style
Students will explore the nature of comedy by informally staging the opening scenes in Shakespeare's As You Like It

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Reliving History Through Slave Narratives
After reading narratives from former slaves that were recorded in the 1930's as part of the Federal Writers' Project, students will research slavery

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Setting the Story
Students examine setting as a significant element of fiction. They learn devices for creating a realistic setting, and use the methods in works of their own

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Southern Puritanism and Tennessee Williams
This lesson continues the exploration of "Puritanism" as an influence on the development of modern American drama in works by Tennessee Williams.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Sundiata, Mali’s Lion King
This lesson introduces the legendary Malian king Sundiata Keita, known as the Lion King of Mali, by using elements of traditional Malian festivals.

Grade 5 Lesson: Tall Tales Today
In this lesson, students are introduced to the genre of American tall tales and will create an original tall tale featuring a "larger-than life" main character.

Grades K-2 Lesson: The Chinese Lion Dance
Dance in the Chinese New Year with your K-2 students

Grades 9-12 Lesson: The Memory Play in American Drama
This lesson explores structural and technical devices of the "memory" play by focusing on a Tennessee Williams' masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie

Grades 9-12 Lesson: The Poetics of Hip-Hop
Students will analyze form in Shakespearean sonnets and hip-hop music

Grades 6-8 Lesson: The Science of Shadow Puppets
Through online learning tools and the creation of shadow puppets and plays, students will learn how light interacts with matter

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Tolerance: Gender Issues
In this lesson, students research how professions such as nursing, clerking, and teaching have changed gender dominance over the past 150 years in the United States.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Twain: An American Humorist
Students will analyze humor and the American character, developing a definition of “American humor”

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Twain: Icon and Iconoclast
This lesson asks students to examine samples of Twain’s work in the context of pre- and post-Civil War America

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Twain: Tom Sawyer—Mythic Adventurer
Learn about the source for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Read, and analyze the novel, with attention to character and style.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Uncivil Civilization in The Hairy Ape
Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape presents a disheartening assessment of the impact of living in the industrialized society of the early 20th century.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Utopian Visions
Students are introduced to the idea of a "utopia"—an idealized society. Students read Sir Thomas More's Utopia and examine the concepts behind his vision of an ideal society.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: A Way With Words or Say What?
Many words and phrases that we use every day were coined by Shakespeare. He is credited with inventing over 2,000 words and expressive phrases.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: The Whale Trail
In this lesson students will explore the world of gray whales

Grades 3-4 Lesson: What a Character
In this lesson, students analyze how a character's personality traits, actions and motives influence the plot of a story

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Who Has Seen the Wind?
In this lesson students are introduced to and encouraged to explore characteristics of the wind through poetry and van Gogh’s paintings

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Writing Myths
Students will explore how myths provide explanations for nature and science. They will read and analyze the Native American myth "Giants and Mosquitoes."

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Writing an Original Fable
In this lesson, students will use the steps of the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing) to write and perform original fables as skits.