Common Core For High School

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students in grades 9-10.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays. His writings and the concept of transcendentalism are typically studied by high school students in grades 9-10.

The punctuation Emily Dickinson used in this poem leaves us pausing to consider each word. We Grow Accustomed to the Dark offers a rich study of how a description of growing dark can be a metaphor for our struggles against uncertainty. This poem is typically studied in high school grades 9-10.

This is a popular poem to study in grades 9-10, not so much for what it says, but how Shakespeare skillfully uses a metaphor in each of its three quatrains. Change of season, fading sunset, fire burning out-- are all metaphors for growing old.

Often taught in grades 9-10, Shelley's poem is a traveler's description of discovering a ruined statue, whom we know from the title is the Egyptian King Ramses II from the 13th century BCE. The Greeks called him Ozymandias.

A story about one's nose disappearing overnight? This story in the genre of magical realism is often studied by students in grades 9-10. Inspiration for writing a dream-like adventure of your own?

An exemplary text for teaching irony, The Gift of the Magi is a tragic story enjoyed by all ages, typically studied in grades 9-10.

Both a memoir and abolitionist statement, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is considered one of the most important and influential writings of the abolitionist movement of the early 19th Century in the United States. It is considered a historical text exemplar for grades 9-10.

The Odyssey is Homer's epic poem detailing the Greek hero Odysseus' long journey back to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. It is considered a sequel to Homer's other epic poem, The Illiad. Both are studied extensively by most high school students as text exemplars.

Kafka's ingenious work is considered modernist fiction, or some might call it "absurdist." All the more reason to study it in high school, typically grades 9-10.

Turgenev's novel about a boy who defies all social conventions and authority, Fathers and Sons is often studied in grades 9-10, along with the philosophy of nihilism.

Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House (1879) offers rich opportunities for students to analyze larger spiritual questions of equality of the sexes, as Ibsen intended. It deals with issues of feminism, intense conflicts between complex characters, and the destruction they can cause. The play is usually introduced in grades 9-10.

Shakespeare's play reveals what happens when ambition and guilt overpower a man who lacks backbone. Oh, dear, what those three witches have to say! Often introduced to high school students in grades 9-10, readers and audiences of all ages enjoy reveling in this tragedy of the ages.

Note: We offer "American Slang," an excerpt from H.L. Mencken's first edition of his groundbreaking study of linguistics titled The American Language, published in 1919. The fourth edition, which is studied as an exemplar text in high school, is not yet in the public domain. We hope you enjoy Mencken's original version.

This poem is a text exemplar for grades 11-12, an excellent introduction to Li Bai (also known as Li Po), whose poems celebrate the joy of friendship, nature, and solitude. A Poem of Changgan is written in the voice of an eighth-century Chinese woman who is speaking to her husband. Readers should be able to identify the use of metaphor, literary devices and how the stanzas are organized. Juxtaposed images allow readers to describe the main emotion of the speaker, and how the poet uses imagery to convey emotion.

Emily Dickinson's most celebrated masterwork, Because I Could Not Stop for Death is often taught in high school grades 11-12, where imperfectly rhyming quatrains, symbols, imagery, and wordplay abound!

Typically introduced in grades 11-12, students identify difficult metaphors in John Donne's most famous poem, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

John Donne's deceptively light poem reveals a deep spiritual metaphor behind its obvious theme exploring attitudes about love and relations between the sexes. The meter of the poem creates dramatic pauses in the middle of stanzas. It is typically studied by high school students in grades 9-10.

Many high school students can identify with the feeling of having an inferiority complex, and someone who wants you to think he's actually cool, as is the case for the main character in T.S. Eliot's often studied work, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.