Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

Learn about the animals of Australia with a language arts lesson about an Australian folktale called, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail. After reading the story as a class, kids discuss events and characters from the book, retell the...

After completing Juliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, class members rewrite a traditional fairy tale, making three significant changes to illustrate a theme of their choosing.

Have your class explore Buddhist Jataka Tales to compare and contrast them to European fables. After defining fables, Jataka tales, and the elements of each, learners identify themes and patterns for both types of narratives and the...

A unit covering second-grade skills reviews 16 letter-sound correspondences, tricky words, and punctuation. Readers provide context for examining story elements, and pupils participate in close reading and write narratives retelling a...

Here are two great lessons that work together and are inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Young writers and actors will retell the story of "The Frog Prince" through games, improvisational script writing, and...

Once upon a time are four words most children are familiar with when reading a fairy tale. But do they know that fairy tales are a great way to learn the literary elements of reading and writing? Use a thorough fairy tale unit...

Explore the structure of narrative writing with this fun, collaborative lesson. Start by reading aloud a short story, asking small groups of learners to fill in key events on a large story board prepared on the class whiteboard....

Turn your classroom into a pig sty with a instructional activity based on the Appalachian folktale The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday. Similar to the story of The Three Little Pigs, the folktale tells a story of four pigs who leave...

Primary readers predict and check for understanding by using comprehension strategies. Prepare readers the first day by frontloading vocabulary and using pictures to visualize the words. On the second day, read the story The Old Woman...

Read this twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Dusty Locks and the Three Bears by Susan Lowell. Kindergartners listen, predict, and discuss the story. They then participate in a dramatization of the story and draw a picture...

A lesson introduces scholars to nouns and adjectives. After listening to a short story and practicing creating adjectives with a card sort, pupils go on a paper hunt to locate different types of paper, complete a chart with adjectives,...

Lights, Camera, Action! Pupils read Little Women and create, act, and direct a melodrama that Jo March and her sisters would enjoy. The lesson plan comes complete with resources for the educator on melodrama as well as examples...

Use fables as a fun way for English Language Learners to gain confidence and fluency in their reading and speaking skills. After reading a fable in class, they retell their story to a group of their peers. When this jigsaw activity is...

"You are pigs." With those three simple words, the lives of the Piggott family were changed forever. Read aloud the children's story Piggybook by Anthony Browne and teach your class the importance of personal responsibility,...

Here are three guided reading lesson plan templates; each designed to meet the needs of a specific level of readers. Levels in focus are emergent, early, and transitional readers. Additionally, prompts to support your small group...

Reinforce reading comprehension with a instructional activity about The Archer and the Sun, a Chinese folktale. Kids learn some background information about Chinese culture before reading the story, and answer literacy...

Ask your class to think about how song lyrics can go with a video and more with a well-sequenced lesson plan that focuses on the song "Two Fingers" by Jake Bugg. Class members work together to make predictions about the content of the...

Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...

In this storytelling lesson, children practice re-telling the story of "How Bear Lost His Tale", review and write out the story sequence, and learn about homophones like tail/tale, sail/sale, etc. Extension activities for various content...

While this resource is actually attempting to sell a product, the foundational ideas may be worth looking into. Using Braidy the StoryBraid doll, learners will gain a better understanding of beginning, middle, and end, as well as story...

If friendship were a soup, what ingredients would be in it? As part of a study of Marcus Pfister's Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale, kids engage in a series of friendship-themed activities using materials contained in this richly...

Designed for third graders but appropriate for older learners as well, this packet of materials underscores the necessity of teaching kids how to summarize, how to identify main ideas and supporting details, and how to ask questions...

Ask your class to puzzle out the meaning of various affixes. Learners read sentences and develop a new word with an affix to replace the underlined words. They write down the words and help to categorize them by affix.