Literature Activities Teens Actually Love: Authentic Projects for the Language Arts Classroom, Grades 9-12

Instead of asking literature to meet the entertainment, cultural, and of course educational needs of today’s youth, Literature Activities Teens Actually Love empowers teachers to guide students in working with literature on their own terms in order to rediscover the joys it holds. Through a variety of innovative and highly engaging projects, this book will develop a new lens through which to view literature and its study, with activities that are at once highly entertaining yet encourage higher order thinking skills and strategies.

Lesson plans incorporating alternatives as diverse as Facebook and quilting show how teachers and students can bridge the technology gap by finding creative solutions to traditional academic problems. By allowing students to use their technological skills to move from print to nonprint assessments, students will have the opportunity to explore the text with a greater degree of ownership over the process, resulting in autonomous learners.

Grades 9-12

Beth Ahlgrim is the English Department Chair at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, IL. She earned her master’s degree in English literature from DePaul University and her master’s in educational leadership from Northeastern Illinois University.

Bill Fritz has more than 25 years of teaching experience. He served in the Peace Corps and taught English as a Second Language to Berbers in Morocco before obtaining a master’s degree in education from Northwestern University. He currently teaches English at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, IL, and was named a finalist for Illinois Teacher of the Year by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2013.