A lesson exploring the theme of oppression in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I have used this as part of a poetry scheme but also as a bridge into texts such as Of Mice and Men. Worksheets are included and students from Year 7 to Year 10 have loved studying this poem.

An exam paper in the style of the new WJEC English Language Component 1 based on an extract from Maya Angelou's 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'. Questions which are written in the style of sample / pre-released materials to allow students valuable practice of the exam type. Contains: Extract from 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' Question Paper

Two reading lessons focusing on content, grammatical features and literary devices in autobiographical writing (two short extracts from 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', by Maya Angelou). The second two writing lessons encourage students to use this text and its features to help their own creativity and writing skills, with a focus on improving writing through re-drafting.

Included in the GCSE English Literature 20th century novel pack are all the tools and tips to answer the exam question on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. There are - handouts and exercises on plot, character and themes how to structure your essays the use of P.E.E. rhetorical devices chart revision tests a connectives chart (discursive markers) 20 GCSE questions model exam answers links to instructional YouTube videos form, structure and context 40 quotes the exam board assessment objectives writer biography

This 13-page resource consists of a set of short writing tasks, and formal essay questions in the style of AP and IB examinations. The initial tasks focus student attention on significant aspects of each chapter, and build up a full understanding of what Maya Angelou is trying to achieve, how she is trying to achieve it, and how successful she has been. Overall, the resource helps students develop a whole range of reading and critical skills and provides practice in writing coherent responses to probing questions on works of literature. The chapter-based questions can, additionally, be used as a basis for class discussion, and the essay topics as an invaluable tool for pre-examination revision and rehearsal. At a time-saving level, teachers will be relieved of the need to develop their own units of study for the work, and to seek out relevant questions from past examinations. The resource effectively promotes the Common Core State Standards CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1-6 and CC.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11.12.1-6.

Quiz your students with this handy 'Wordle' ppt on quotes from the autobiography. Quick starter activity.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou – Reading Comprehension Overview: This comprehensive worksheet is designed to enhance a range of critical thinking and analytical skills. It offers a wide variety of engaging exercises to improve your word meaning, inference, summarizing, analysis and evaluation, content evaluation, structure comprehension, retrieval skills, prediction, explanation, exploration, as well as comparison and synthesis abilities. It also includes an answer sheet for convenient marking. Key Features: • Word Meaning: Enhance your vocabulary by exploring and understanding the meanings of various words. • Inferences: Master the art of drawing logical conclusions from given information. • Summaries: Develop the skill to condense complex texts into concise and meaningful summaries. • Analysis and Evaluation: Improve your ability to analyze and critically evaluate information. • Content, Structure, and Quality: Assess the content, structure, and quality of different texts. • Retrieval: Enhance your ability to locate and extract specific information from texts. • Predicting: Predict the outcome or future developments based on available information. • Explaining and Exploring: Expand your knowledge and understanding by explaining and exploring different topics. • Comparison and Synthesis: Compare and combine information from multiple sources to gain deeper insights. Ideal Usage: • Cover Lesson: Perfect for covering lessons when the primary educator is absent. • Homework Task: Assign as homework to reinforce learning outside the classroom. • Revision: An excellent resource for revising and consolidating key skills and knowledge. Don’t miss out on this valuable resource that will undoubtedly accelerate your academic progress and help you become a more proficient and critical thinker. PDF Download

This 13-page resource is a set of short writing tasks, and formal essay questions in the style of A Level, AP and IB examinations. The initial tasks focus student attention on significant aspects of each chapter, and build up a full understanding of what Maya Angelou is trying to achieve, how she is trying to achieve it, and how successful she has been. The chapter-based questions can, additionally, be used as a basis for class discussion, and the essay topics as an invaluable tool for pre-examination revision and rehearsal. At a time-saving level, teachers will be relieved of the need to develop their own units of study for the work, and to seek out relevant questions from past examinations. ‘These prompts are a terrific tool for generating class discussions, creating short answer exams, or longer essay assignments. I have purchased a number of them and am impressed with each one’ (from the LitWorks.com Commendations page).

This six-page resource will help secondary school students understand and analyse the poem Caged Bird by Maya Angelou. Activities begin with comprehension-style tasks including a summary table and sentence starters, before moving into closer analysis of themes and language techniques, including focus on specific examples from the poem. The final page includes a scaffolded extended writing task with a focus question, pre-written introduction and planning scaffold with ideas and examples pre-filled to assist students in writing the rest of the response themselves. This resource is suitable for a high school audience, especially around the 8-11th grade bracket, although it may well suit younger or older grades depending on ability. File is included in both Word and pdf formats. Note that this resource deals with Angelou’s poem Caged Bird, not the autobiographical text I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings While you’re here, why not check out these other resources on Angelou’s poems: Still I Rise | Phenomenal Woman.

A quick starter to help students remember the quotes from the text. Challenge them to identify the speaker/character described!

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Comprehension questions, themes, essay titles and plans

This 38-question multiple-choice reading comprehension and analysis test on a nonfiction excerpt from the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (from the textbook HOLT McDOUGAL LITERATURE, GRADE 9 ISBN-10: 0547115784) has questions from different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (revised). It will test students’ literal and interpretive understanding of the selection including: point of view, making inferences, vocabulary (including words from SAT/ACT exams), cause and effect, figurative language, literary devices, author’s purpose, main idea, summarization, fact and opinion, analogies, and other elements of literature. Questions are modeled after standardized tests (SAT, ACT, and state tests) to familiarize students with the structure and vocabulary of standardized test questions. Questions are spaced 1.5 lines apart for comfortable reading. The questions also encourage students to go back and re-read key parts of the selection, a crucial skill for comprehension and improving reading stamina. Teachers are encouraged to remove/add questions as they see fit for their students. Answer key included. Editable MS Word Doc. You can use this product for years and years! Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated! *Teacher’s note: It is recommended that the reading selection’s paragraphs be numbered before copies are given to students. This helps students locate answers to questions with references to specific paragraphs of the text. This particular reading selection has approximately 7 pages (57 paragraphs) total. Summary of excerpt: Marguerite introduces and speaks of Mrs. Bertha Flowers, the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She delivers groceries to Mrs. Flowers’s home and she teaches Marguerite the importance of the human voice and lends her books. The excerpt begins with the paragraph beginning with the line: “For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the Store, the school and the church …” and concludes with paragraph beginning with the line: “Childhood’s logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute).” **PLEASE NOTE: Due to copyright restrictions, this product does not contain the reading selection(s). This product is student-centered, meaning: –it allows you to become a facilitator! –happier teachers! –happier students! –happier administrators!

This 41-question multiple-choice reading comprehension and analysis test on an excerpt from the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou has questions from different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (revised). The excerpt reading selection is approximately 8 pages long and has 43 paragraphs and includes the scenes where Marguerite recalls living with her grandmother and uncle in the Store in Arkansas and walking home Mrs. Bertha Flowers where she eats cookies and lemonade, borrows some books, and learns about the value of reading and speaking. The excerpt begins with the lines “We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the Store (it was always spoken of with a capital s)…” and ends with the line, “It was enough to prove that she liked me.” It will test students’ literal and interpretive understanding of the selection including: point of view, making inferences, vocabulary, cause and effect, figurative language, literary devices, author’s purpose, fact and opinion, analogies, and other elements of literature. Questions are modeled after standardized tests (SAT, ACT, and state tests) to familiarize students with the structure and vocabulary of standardized test questions. Questions are spaced 1.5 lines apart for comfortable reading. The questions also encourage students to go back and re-read key parts of the selection, a crucial skill for comprehension and improving reading stamina. Teachers are encouraged to remove/add questions as they see fit for their students. Answer key included. Editable MS Word Doc. You can use this product for years and years! Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated! Objectives/US Standards (SUGGESTED) (From Corestandards.com): Students are expected to: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.1 Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.5 Analyze in detail the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing and refining a key concept. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. This product is student-centered, meaning: –it allows you to become a facilitator! –happier teachers! –happier students! –happier administrators!

A whole lesson on AQA Paper 2 of the New Specification GCSE English Language. Students are guided through understanding the mark scheme for this question, and work together to analyse an extract from Maya Angeou's 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', before they answer a mock Q3 on the extract. This takes 2-3 hours to teach, or materials could be adapted into revision. The lesson is on one powerpoint, and the extract is a single A4 Word document.

Extract ‘I Know why the Caged Bird Sings’ plus questions 1-5 Extract ‘The Da Vinci Code’ plus questions 1-5

Dr. Maya Angelou was an author, actress, singer, and most notably a poet. Known for her command of language, the poem “Still I Rise” is one of her most acclaimed works that speaks to overcoming oppression. This resource contains an in-depth analysis of the poem for teachers and aligned graphic organizers and text dependent questions for students. This is a NO PREP resource for teachers. Teacher Resources: - Detailed Lesson Plan - Text Analysis (3 pages) - Teacher Response Guide The Texts: - Dr. Angelou biography - “Still I Rise” student copy with wide margins for literal and analytical annotations Graphic Organizers: - Finding the Theme - Vocabulary

Created for A-level ENGLISH LITERATURE A (7712/2B) Paper 2B: Texts in Shared Contexts: Modern Times: Literature from 1945 to the Present Day , Option 1, this is an example modern unseen extract taken from Maya Angelou’s ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ and includes a question on the extract itself, and the follow up question where students need to compare prose and drama.

Some distinctive features of biography and autobiographies and some of their subcategories. Some problems faced by authors who write them which may also shed light when reading them. Michael White and John Gribbin: Stephen Hawking, a Life in Science; Mary Cadogan, The Woman Behind William: a Life of Richmal Crompton; Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

This is a 1700-word essay answering a Comparative Studies question on the Literary Genre of 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte, Maya Angelou's 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings' and the film 'Dances With Wolves'. It's an annotated version of a detailed, analytical and highly-structured piece which allows students to see exactly how to plan and write an answer in the Comparative Studies section.

This resource includes two poetry anthologies that I have used in both Key Stage Three and Key Stage Four. I have included a snapshot of the selection of poems included by listing the first 7 poems in each. There are 16 poems in total for each anthology. Poetry Anthology poems: London- William Blake The Tiger- William Blake Daffodils- William Wordsworth Ozymandias- Percy Bysshe Shelley Nothing Gold Can Stay- Robert Frost Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening- Robert Frost I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings- Maya Angelou Differentiated Poetry Anthology poems for a lower ability: Augustus Gloop- Roald Dahl My Teacher Wasn't Half as Nice as Yours Seems to be- Roald Dahl London- William Blake The Tiger- William Blake Daffodils- William Wordsworth Nothing Gold Can Stay- Robert Frost Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening- Robert Frost