10th & 11th Grade English: American Dream Poems | High School Poetry | Vol 1

Want to immerse your students in the diversity of this country by studying engaging poetry together?

Your students will learn so much when they explore the essential questions of American Literature with these ready-to-go lessons.

A collection of questions on 27 poems, spanning from Puritan poetry to the 20th century, this bundle will provide you with over a month of rigorous, engaging, and ready-to-go lessons. The themes explored in these units--materialism, love, race, family dynamics, class, immigration, language, tradition, gender, the search for the self, the American Dream--are great choices for supplementing a thematic unit, for adding more voices and perspectives to your unit on a novel or play, or for a sub plan.

Every lesson contains questions for close reading and discussion, freewrite prompts, suggestions for creative interactive notebook activities, and ideas for assessment. All of the answer keys quote the important passages, so there is no guessing on your part as to which parts of the poems are most important. When you discuss the questions with your classes, you can point them to the sections to make sure that they are engaging with the poetry and working to interpret the sometimes challenging language.

With 7 different suggestions for assessment including essays, projects, and quizzes with rubrics and guides, you will have plenty to chose from—and you won’t get bored grading student work.

The variety of materials, real-life connections, and innovative approaches to the information will keep students engaged and excited about learning. Additionally, the concrete text-based questions and unique sources discourage cheating and encourage students to answer for themselves.

"Wonderful addition to my American Studies class. Kids were engaged with every lesson."--Buyer

This resource includes units on the following poems (though the texts of all the poems are included because of copyright):

“To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet

“Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 18th, 1666” by Anne Bradstreet

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

“Much Madness is Divinest Sense” by Emily Dickinson

“This is My Letter to the World” by Emily Dickinson

““[I felt a Funeral, in my Brain]” by Emily Dickinson

"We Were the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

“Sonnet: The Ladies Home Journal” by Sandra Gilbert

“A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

"I ,Too” by Langston Hughes

“Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes

"Harlem" (also known as "Dreams" or "A Dream Deferred") by Langston Hughes

“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes

“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” by Helene Johnson

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

“A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde

“If We Must Die” by Claude Mckay

“If and When Dreams Come True” by W.S. Mark

“Prospective Immigrants Please Note” by Adrienne Rich

“Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

“The Fury of Overshoes” by Anne Sexton

“When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer” by Walt Whitman

"I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman

There are no lectures or power points here—students will do the work themselves, with guidance from their teacher. Rather than telling them what the poems mean, you will be empowering them with the confidence and skills to tackle a poem on their own.

The American Experience is a big topic—there are no easy answers and no simple explanations. But when students explore a large variety of experiences, they will begin to understand the problems, variety, and greatness of this country.