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"Teaching Mockingbird suggests a central question around which a class's study of Harper Lee's novel can be organized: What factors influence our moral growth? What kinds of experiences help us learn how to judge right from wrong?  As students read and reflect on the novel, they return to this question and can begin to make deeper and broader connections between the novel and their own moral and ethical lives. They begin by considering the pivotal moments in their lives that shape who they are and their senses of right and wrong.  Then they analyze how the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird change over the course of the story, identifying pivotal moments in the story that influence how the characters think about morality and justice.  The complete Teaching Mockingbird guide also introduces models of moral development that have emerged from the field of developmental psychology, which students can use as the basis for even deeper character analysis."

"Facing History's unique video collection includes insights from top scholars, the voices and memories of witnesses to history, and inspiring stories from teachers and students who wrestle with the complex questions of history in today's classrooms. The videos selected below provide historical background and thematic insights that will be useful for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. Also be sure to check out activities for Mockingbird that use these resources."

This guide is written for teachers and students who are studying Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The guide is written specifically for students in the UK, but I hope it may be helpful to users from other parts of the world. To Kill a Mockingbird is a set text for GCSE exams in English literature. It may also be studied for teacher-assessed coursework in English in Key Stages 3 and 4 (GCSE reading

For the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee's story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus - a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape - came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. To Kill a Mockingbird didn't change everyone's mind, but it did open some. And it made an impression on many young people who, like Scout, were trying to get a grip on right and wrong in a world that is not always fair.

"Transform how you teach Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" with this multimedia collection.   Our study guide and lesson plans will help you use Mockingbird's setting as a springboard for engaging students in issues of justice, gender, and race. This collection also offers African American voices, which are absent from Mockingbird's narration, so you can deepen student perspectives of this classic novel."

Without question, Tom Robinson would be better off today. In fact, Tom Robinson could live a life completely unimaginable and unrecognizable to the characters in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" - the groundbreaking book, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week.  No lynchings.  No all white male juries.  No presumption of guilt based on skin color.  No state-sanctioned discrimination. Yet, Tom would realize a sad, but undeniable truth -- that racism is still alive and all too well in contemporary America.  He would know it in the economic injustice that has left a disproportionate number of African-Americans -- 25 percent -- living in poverty.   He would see it in the criminal injustice that has left a disproportionate number of African-American men - 6 times the number of white, non-Hispanic men -- living in jails and prisons.  And he would feel it in the hate-filled, racist rhetoric that still defines too much of our political discourse - rhetoric that questions the Civil Rights Act, rhetoric that questions the birthplace of our President.

It's time to stop pretending that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in "Jurassic Park."

Transcript of an audio file on TKAM featuring Sandra Day O'Connor, Horton Foote, Robert Duvall and others.

Atticus Finch is one of the greatest fictional dads of all time, and in honor of the film's half-century mark, both his daughters spoke to CNN. That is, Peck's real life daughter, Cecilia Peck, and the actress who played Scout, Mary Badham. By all accounts, Peck, who won the Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus, embodied his character's values on and off screen. "He was an Atticus," Cecilia Peck said. "He really was that kind of father to me and my brothers. I believe that he was always very much like Atticus but I think that doing the film when we were very young made him become even more that way and I think as much as he put of himself into the role, Atticus became him, too."

"Copy-change collaborations invite young writers to use an established text as a framework for writing an imitation piece that follows the original sentence for sentence, but that somehow remakes it completely. In this version, ninth-grade students collaborate to write a piece about "To Kill a Mockingbird" that is based on a recent Times article about viral Internet content."

"In a small Southern town during the Jim Crow era, a black man is accused of raping a white woman. During his stormy trial there are threats of lynching, as well as intimations that the white woman had been the sexual aggressor. That tale summarizes the plot of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," a staple of high school English courses. But it also describes part of the more complicated and less morally uplifting real-life story told in "Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair," a half-hour documentary to be broadcast Friday on NPR stations as part of the "Radio Diaries" series (www.radiodiaries.org)."

The NY Times celebrates the 50th Anniversary with lesson plans and resources.

This site contains a teacher's guide, reader's guide, and an audio discussion (featuring Horton Foote and Sandra Day O'Connor). It's from the National Endowment for the Arts

A response to Gladwell's New Yorker article.

An interesting column on the relevance of TKAM and how it is perceived by black authors and readers.