Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: "Hot Dog" Book Reports
Learners will use a Makes Sense Strategies Think-sheet to learn to identify the characters, setting, main idea and details of a book read. [Requires Adobe Reader.]
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Writing a Simple Book Report With Your Listening Center
You probably have a listening center in your room. This lesson shows your students how to describe the characters and setting in a story after they've listened to the story on tape.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Florida Center for Reading Research: Narr. Text Structure: Picture the Character
A lesson plan in which students read a narrative text and complete a graphic organizer to illustrate and write characteristics of one of the characters. Materials are included.
Read Works
Read Works: Grade 1: Three Lesson Unit: Character: Actions, Feelings, Looks
[Free Registration/Login Required] A series of three lesson plans, based on David Shannon's books No, David!, David Gets in Trouble, and David Goes to School. Students learn how to utilize text and picture clues to determine and describe...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Compare/contrast Themes and Genres in Literary Texts
Determining the theme is not easy; you have to use the clues the author leaves to figure it out yourself. The author implies information about the story through plot points, setting, and characters. You infer and draw conclusions based...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Day 1 Rude Giants
Young scholars will use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, and events by working with partners to ask and answer questions about the text.
Teachers.net
Teachers.net: The Gingerbread Man
Introduce your primary students to retelling and sequencing skills. Will also help move your students to higher-level thinking which deals with characters, setting, and plot. Site offers one week's worth of lessons.
Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, Stevens Institute of Technology
Ciese Real Time Data Projects: Movie in the Making
In this project students will report on a book by describing how they would turn that book into a motion picture. After reading and studying the main components of their novel, students will use their imaginations to explain how they...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: A Literature Inspired Writing Lesson: A Time Traveler's Log
Students will read chapter four of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, noting both the time traveler's descriptions of the new world of 800,000 ACE, and the conclusions the main character draws as a 19th century man. Students will think of a...
PBS
Pbs: The American Novel: Literary Timeline: Novels: 1850: The Scarlet Letter
Brief Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Highlights the novel's themes, setting, and main characters.
PBS
Pbs: The American Novel: Literary Timeline: Novels: 1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Brief introduction to Uncle Tom's Cabin, highlighting the novel's important themes, setting, and main characters.
PBS
Pbs: The American Novel: Literary Timeline: Novels: 1826: Last of the Mohicans
Brief introduction to The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, highlighting the novel's themes, setting, and main characters.
PBS
Pbs: The American Novel: Literary Timeline: Novels: 1851: Moby Dick
A brief introduction to Moby Dick, highlighting the novel's setting, main characters, and important themes.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Reach: Recipe for Writing!
REACH for more! Be an author! Write and illustrate your very own story by mixing up a simple recipe of WHO, WHERE, WHAT, and ENDING.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Getting to Know Adelita
In this lesson, 1st graders will describe the characters, setting, and key details in "Adelita: A Mexican Cinderella" by Tomie de Paolaby. With guidance and support, students will record the details on a circle map.
Wikimedia
Wikipedia: The Chosen
This is a brief article introducing the main characters, setting and conflict within Chaim Potok's novel, "The Chosen."
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Story Maps
Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main...
ClassFlow
Class Flow: Story Elements
[Free Registration/Login Required] This flipchart reviews the five main elements of a fiction story using the example of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Curated OER
Educational Technology Clearinghouse: Maps Etc: Ivanhoe, Circa 1150 to 1200
A map illustrating place names and routes of the main characters from Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe, set in the time of the Third Crusade and England's Norman Era. The map shows the routes of Cedric, Isaac, and Brian de Bois-Guilbert,...