Category: Resources for Teaching

Resources for Teaching includes a variety of articles and essays, plus links to useful resources for teachers of literature and writing. If you’re looking for something you don’t see, try typing a few keywords into the search box.

July Poems for memorization, recitation, and copywork.

July Poems

We in the northern hemisphere may be melting in the July heat, but there are compensations. July poems from poets such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Amy Lowell, and Lewis Carroll remind us...

A handful of the greatest books forms the core of a quality home library.

A Reading List from 1910

This 1910 reading list first appeared in How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin. Beginning with the greatest works of all time, he offers a reading list of great books and poetry that...

Types of Humor

Literary devices that create humor As you read, you will encounter many types of humor, and you will find some types funnier than others. If you want to learn to use humor in writing, it helps...

Style: Canons of Rhetoric

Style: Canons of Rhetoric Style concerns the artful expression of ideas. If invention addresses what is to be said; style addresses how this will be said. From a rhetorical perspective style is not incidental,...

Arrangement: Canons of Rhetoric

Arrangement Arrangement (dispositio or taxis) concerns how one orders speech or writing. In ancient rhetorics, arrangement referred solely to the order to be observed in an oration, but the term has broadened to include...

Invention: Canons of Rhetoric

Invention Invention concerns finding something to say (its name derives from the Latin invenire, “to find”). Certain common categories of thought became conventional to use in order to brainstorm for material. These common places...

Canons of Rhetoric

The Canons of Rhetoric invention  | arrangement  | style  | memory  | delivery Rhetoric, as an art, has long been divided into five major categories or “canons”: Invention Arrangement Style Memory Delivery These categories...

Graphic Organizers for Essay Writing

What is a graphic organizer? Graphic organizers are useful visual tool that help students brainstorm ideas, organize information, and draft papers with just a few words or phrases. There are many different kinds of organizers available,...

Cultivating a Pleasant Speaking Voice

When teaching the art of recitation or rhetoric, we sometimes forget to teach one element essential for confident presentation: a pleasant, well-modulated speaking voice. A timid, squeaky, mumbling, or breathy voice is not only be tiring to use, but can be a social and business liability. Here are a few ideas for cultivating a pleasant, well-modulated speaking voice.

Of Education by John Milton

Of Education by John Milton Of Education was published anonymously as a tract in 1644. It represents John Milton’s views “concerning the best and noblest way of education.” Milton believed that education was to “fit a man to...

Swift by Jervas, oil on canvas

Jonathan Swift Resources

Jonathan Swift Resources Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) wrote some of the most brilliant prose in the English language and is often regarded as its foremost satirist. While best known for his masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels and,...

Hudson River School Artwork

The Hudson River School A group of artists known as the Hudson River School painted romantic landscape scenes, some of which depicted the American setting for Washington Irving’s works. These artists included Thomas Cole,...

Oscar Wilde, as photographed by Elliott & Fry in 1881, from the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Oscar Wilde Resources

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an immensely gifted writer who produced a large variety of work ranging from humorous to tragic. He had the capacity to be ridiculous (The Importance of Being Earnest) as well...

Stacy Esch Resources

Many thanks to Stacy Esch for providing these resources for Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as a Tolkien essay (below) and sharing them with Excellence in Literature. Stacy Esch teaches composition and literature at West...