By the 10th grade, students in an English class are ready for serious analysis and writing. While English classes in elementary and middle school can get away with devoting large portions of the period to creative writing exercises, teaching students to read and write properly, with some room for creative writing, should be the key goal. Plan your 10th grade English class with a variety of lesson ideas that help your students refine their reading and writing skills, while also turning them into lifelong lovers of literature.

Prose Lesson Plan
The bulk of a 10th-grade English class will be spent reading and discussing novels. Have your students read a section of a novel as homework. Lead a discussion about various formal aspects of the text, including plot, character, imagery, diction and theme. Have students come to class prepared with one question about how the novel relates to today's society. Let one student at a time raise the question and have the whole class discuss it, with specific reference to the text at hand.

Poetry Lesson Plan
Students tend to shy away from poetry, but this might be because they have not been taught how to read it properly. Find a good anthology of poems and read one together out loud. Show students how to measure the poem's meter (rhythm) and rhyme scheme. Ask students to consider if these and other formal elements (metaphor, allusion, alliteration, for example) make this a conventional poem or a more radical one. Have them consider the poem's meaning, and discuss how the form or structure of the poem that you have analyzed relates to the poem's meaning.

Essay Writing Lesson Plan
Students need to be taught throughout high school how to write a proper essay. Use a colloquial example to help students craft a thesis statement. Give them broad topics, such as "Violence in sports" or "Celebrity culture" and have them narrow their topics down to an appropriate size. Next, have students take a position on their topic and create a thesis statement. Ask a few students to write their thesis statements on the board. Lead a discussion about how effective the thesis statements are, and how they can be changed or improved.

Creative Writing Lesson Plan
Some portion of a 10th-grade English class should be taken up by creative writing exercises. Let students practice their linguistic dexterity by rewriting a well-known fairy tale, such as "Little Red Riding Hood" or "Jack and the Beanstalk." The catch is that students must write half the story in the most informal or slang language possible, and the other half in the most formal or academic language possible. Read the best ones out loud.