The seven thematic units in this guide focus on communication skills, offering English teachers contemporary plans for teaching writing, listening, reading, reasoning, critical thinking, and appreciation of literary genres. The units were selected for their humanistic approaches to student language learning, combining English instruction with topics in the humanities. Each unit contains comments from the teacher wbo developed the unit, an overview of the unit, general objectives, evaluation methods, daily lesson plans and activities, study guides, resource materials, and other relevant suggestions and attachments. The topics of the units are (1) rediscovering nature, (2) a progression of reading and writing materials for teaching basic skills to reluctant and underachieving students, (3) rediscovering themes in fairy tales, (4) a formula for mystery, (5) tradition and change in "Fiddler on the Roof," (6) celebrating life, and (7) the Jewish experience in American Literature. (RL)