To Kill a Mockingbird Lesson Plan: Key Ideas and Details
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This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic To Kill a Mockingbird, and supports the standard of determining a theme or central idea of a text and analyzing its development over the course of the text. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.
Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
Ask students:
- How might a writer’s experiences impact the themes in their work?
- How might readers’ own experiences impact their perceptions of a book?
Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE
- Read the description on the To Kill a Mockingbird topic page.
- Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding.
- Assign Related Reading. Have students read one of the following articles: “In Depth” or “Laws and Customs” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.
Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS
Assign To Kill a Mockingbird Challenge and Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.
Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND
Students express what they learned about To Kill a Mockingbird while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.
- Make-a-Movie: Produce a trailer for To Kill a Mockingbird that uses descriptions and images of its setting and major symbols to convey a theme of the novel.
- Make-a-Map: Create a concept map analyzing how Scout evolves over the course of To Kill A Mockingbird in order to identify a major theme.
- Creative Coding: Code a museum exhibit about To Kill A Mockingbird with artifacts representing the novel’s symbols and themes.
- Primary Source Activity: Analyze the magazine article by Harper Lee and cite evidence to answer the accompanying questions.
More to Explore
Sortify: Writers: Players sort by attribute, such as genre, time period, and more in this learning game.
Related BrainPOP Topics: Deepen understanding of analyzing key ideas and details with these topics: Theme, Setting, Characterization, and Story Conflict.
Teacher Support Resources:
- Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students to stop, think, and express ideas.
- Learning Activities Modifications: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
- Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.
