Young thinkers view two narrative art tapestries and study the images included that tell a story about the Roman Emperor Constantine. As they examine the details of the tapestries, pupils use a Venn Diagram to record the similarities and...

Does your langauge arts class journal frequently? Extend one of your journaling activities by having your writers choose a journal entry and take it through the five stages of writing. They will use the attached graphic organizer to...

Combining visual and language arts, here is a resource that prompts middle schoolers to write stories based on pictures of their surroundings. They use digital cameras to take pictures of favorite areas in the school. Next, they choose...

A reading of Panic in Paris launches a review of the elements of narrative writing. Class members work in groups to find narrative devices in the book and record their findings on a provided worksheet. Using the completed pages,...

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...

Fifth graders analyze William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, paying close attention to character development, plot, and dialogue. With daily reading and thoughtful discussion, scholars take pen to paper to respond to journal...

After reading and describing the characters, setting, and plot in The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, class members write original Island Adventure narrative pieces including detailed descriptions of people, places, and things. Afterward,...

Students are introduced to the idea of traditional oral narratives and divide them into genres. They explore the genres of context, motifs and variants. Each student finds oral narratives in their own lives and practice retelling them in...

Young scholars explore the elements of a narrative for its purpose, type of audience, mood, main character, minor characters, setting, and conflicts in the story. A story outline is developed and a five paragraph essay composed in this...

Collective story writing is a great way to reinforce the concept of story elements and collaborative learning. Young writers discuss story elements such as, setting, character, action, climax, conclusion, foreshadowing, dialogue, and...

The subject doesn't sound to interesting, but with a child's imagination even a trip to the store can be an adventure. The class writes a narrative story about a trip to the store. They organize their stories to include an introductory...

Here is a activity that sounds like a lot of fun. Kids discuss the artistic elements and motives for the painting, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. To get the scope and scale of this oversized masterpiece, they use butcher paper and the...

Students write poems and a narrative story.  In this writing lesson, students read stories and poems written by other students and read examples of haiku's and diamonte's.  Students write an acrostic poem and a diamonte...

Learners work in pairs to create a creature and its habitat out of construction paper. Then students write a narrative to describe the animal and its habitat.

Delve into narrative writing that puts choice in the hands of the writers. Kids pick their own characters, emotions, items, and places from a list and tie them together in the exposition. Several questions help guide the writers toward...

Travel back in American history to the era of slavery and abolition. After reading about the Underground Railroad, young historians examine a painting depicting the event, and write a narrative from the point of view of a person in the...

On July 1, 1863 the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee met the Army of the Potomac, under the leadership of Major General George Meade. Considered the turning point of the war, the Battle of Gettysburg...

A creative spin occurs when one pupil acts as author Ann M. Martin. Using a Q & A at the back of her book A Dog's Life, other classmates ask the "author" questions. They discuss the reasons why they know the book is from a...

Teach your upper graders how to use an idea web to develop a topic for writing. After reading a variety of stories about friendship (a list of stories with the theme of friendship is included), model using an idea web. Class members...

Young writers generate descriptive words. They use pictures of various landscapes (from books, magazines, or the Internet) and complete a story pyramid. The pyramid (included here) asks to describe the main character, the setting, and...

Before writing their own fables, class members select an animal or insect to use in their story and research its character, habits, movements, etc. After reading a wide variety of fables and identifying the elements of a fable, writers...

Write dear old Peter Rabbit a letter with this lesson. First, youngsters listen to the story Peter Rabbit and analyze the story elements. Then they complete a story map graphic organizer in order to write a letter to Peter...

Fifth graders identify the basic elements of a narrative story, such as the beginning, middle, and the end; to analyze the character traits in the story to write a summary using the 5 Ws and How chart included; through sample stories...

Students investigate Chinese culture by reading their folk tales.  For this creative writing lesson, students practice identifying the different elements in a folk tale and examine the related vocabulary.  Students organize...