Choosing meaningful text pairings is one of the most important parts of teaching language arts. When choosing a text, there’s so many factors to consider:
- Firstly, what are you hoping to teach with this text? What classroom or instructional goal does it serve?
- Additionally, what is the optimum text level and complexity for this lesson and these learners?
- Most importantly, is the text relevant and meaningful for students? Will they be engaged?
- Finally, how long should the text be? How much class time will you have for this text?
With these kinds of lesson planning questions in mind, it can be challenging and time-consuming to find text pairings that check all the boxes. Two years ago, I shared a blog series about these challenges.
- First, we focused on how teachers know when it’s time to choose new texts.
- Then, I shared my favorite resources for finding new texts to teach.
- Finally, we discussed the best strategies for teaching a new text.
To make this process even easier for teachers, today I want to share 11 unexpected and fresh text pairings for high school ELA!
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Protest
Especially in the last few years, my students have become increasingly interested in social justice. In particular, they are focused on LGBTQIA+ rights, March for Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter. As a result, I’m often looking for literature that speaks to similar concerns.
Poetry Foundation has a lot of great poetry collections that offer inspiration:
- LGBTQ Pride Poems;
- Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment;
- Political Poems; and Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement.
Overall, I have a few texts that I really enjoy. Check out these protest texts:
Firstly, “The Sign in My Father’s Hands” by Martin Espada is such an unexpected poem. The speaker’s perspective is what makes this poem resonate. Read it here.
Similarly, “For the Consideration of Poets” by Haki Madhubuti is probably my favorite protest poem for the classroom. The catalogues and repetition remind me so much of Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” (itself a kind of protest poem). Additionally, the question in the poem lends itself to classroom discussion. Read it here.
Finally, excerpts from “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau pair really well with either of these poems. In particular, unpacking the idea of civil disobedience resonates with students. Read it here.
Grab all four of these text pairings in my Protest Poetry Synthesis Bundle!
Loss
Maybe it’s the last few years or so, but poetry of loss has really been on my mind lately. These text pairings may seem unusual, but the common thread of loss runs through all of them.
Firstly, “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop is the first poem I thought of when choosing text pairings for this category. The speaker’s matter-of-fact tone become progressively more devastating, and that last stanza–oh, there’s nothing quite like it! Read it here.
Perhaps because “One Art” is a challenging poem, I was next drawn to “Luke Havergal” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. While this isn’t a simple poem, it’s a little more straightforward. The symbolism in this poem clearly leads readers to consider loss and how it affects those that remain. Read it here.
In literature, war is a specific topic that draws on a particular kind of devastation. With a serious subject, it’s important to choose texts that are respectful without obscuring or sugar coating the subject. For this reason, I choose text pairings that cross several time periods, styles, and genres. (When offering these poems to students, it may be helpful to provide a trigger warning for violence.) Some powerful text pairings to consider include:
- “Grass” by Carl Sandburg
- “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane
- “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen
- “We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky
- “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell
- “To Live is an Act of Courage” by Jennifer Michael Hecht
- “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
All of these text pairings about war can be found in Synthesis Bundle #5, which helps students navigate a serious topic.
Language
As an English teacher, I am endlessly fascinated by how language grows, evolves, and can be weaponized. In fact, this is the category that inspired this post! All of these texts emphasize the power of language, words, and stories.
Perhaps no character in literature is as closely associated with rhetoric and word craft as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony. His funeral speech is a close read in many literature classrooms. The close reading activity I use with his speech is free! My sophomores read Julius Caesar, and we spend most of Act III evaluating how language affects action. In particular, I have three questions I ask students about language:
- Firstly, based on Antony’s funeral speech, is rhetoric dangerous?
- Additionally, do speakers talented in the art of rhetoric have an obligation to use that skill ethically?
- Similarly, are listeners obligated to be critical thinkers? Do audiences also have an obligation to speakers?
After reading Julius Caesar, my students read two shorter texts that also deal with the intersections of language, rhetoric, and morality.
Firstly, we read and watch “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is a text I always teach. In this Ted Talk, Adichie focuses on the power of narrative as it relates to stereotypes, discrimination, and the creation of “single stories.” Watch it here.
Toward the end of the year, my sophomores also read the essay “Words and Behavior” by Aldous Huxley. This is an extremely challenging read, so I teach it through whole group guided reading. In this essay, Huxley, motivated by Hitler and World War II, describes the dangers of using language negligently or nefariously. His argument is astute but complex. In reading this article, students can connect all three texts together. Here are some questions that help students synthesize these three texts:
- What single stories affect the characters in Julius Caesar?
- Similarly, what single stories did Huxley see that inspired him to write his essay?
- Based on Huxley’s essay, how would he respond to Antony’s funeral speech? Who would he have held responsible for the civil war at the end of the play?
- While criticizing the danger of misusing language, Huxley relies heavily on rhetoric. How should readers reconcile this seeming contradiction?
Time
Coming out of a year in which time moved slowly, quickly, and sideways, it seems natural to focus on text pairings about time. While my sophomores are less interested in the passage of time, upperclassmen are more acutely aware of time as they count down the days until graduation.
To begin, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick is a staple in many British literature classes. While the title of this poem is always good for a giggle, Herrick’s meditations on time and aging ring true with seniors! Read it here.
In a wildly different direction, “Time Does Not Bring Relief, You All Have Lied” by Edna St. Vincent Millay resonates with students experiencing first love and first break ups. Millay’s tone in this poem is memorable and totally counter to Herrick’s sentimental tone. The contrast leads to an interesting discussion about how time does or does not heal. Read it here.
Similarly, “I Have a Time Machine” by Brenda Shaughnessy also deals with love, healing, and time. Again, the tone in this poem is very different. More so than the previous two poems, the speaker in this poem shows growth. Read it here.
Since these three poems complement one another so nicely, they are all included in the 9-12 Main Idea Poetry Bundle.
Valuable Text Pairings
At the end of the day, choosing interesting text pairings is an important part of being an English teacher. Some text pairings are obvious and speak for themselves, but the unexpected text pairing can be a great way to make meaningful connections and spark powerful discussions. What unexpected text pairings do you love?
Pawel Czerwinski, Alice Yamamura, Greg Jeanneau, Freddy G, and Zuzana
