Examine the lives of four women—Blanche Stuart Scott, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Evans Price, and Sybil Ludington—in a 23-page activity packet. Each profile comes with a set of vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. Further...

Mark Twain's frame story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" provides an opportunity for a study of this story-within-a-story pattern. Using an illustrated template, class members record a plot summary of the frame story...

What makes a good leader? Use the curriculum guide for William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to help scholars answer that question. Pupils research the play's historical context and other background information before engaging in...

Eighth graders implement plot summary organizers to identify essential elements such as conflict and resolution in literature. In pairs, they retell fairy tales to each other and complete plot summaries about them. As students read new...

What do Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch, and Frosty the Snowman have in common? They're all characters from beloved holiday movies that viewers revisit in the play Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!). Scholars conduct research...

Analyze point of view and how it affects a literary work with this lesson. Middle schoolers create a written piece that focuses on point of view. They review the literary term "point of view," and explore examples of the term in text....

Seventh graders explore the various elements found in the advertisement of a dramatic experience. Playbills are created that reflect the plot without revealing the climax of the play. Costumes, set construction, and character description...

Seventh graders write a few sentences explaining the most important events of their lives during the past year. As a class, they discuss why they chose the elements they did for their sentences. To end the lesson, they read a variety of...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Students practice using visualization to aid in their reading comprehension. After a read aloud of a selected story, students write a brief summary of the plot accompanied by an illustration of the characters they have visualized.

Third graders practice using visualization to aid in their reading comprehension. After a reading a chapter from the book "Charlotte's Web," students write a brief summary of the plot using their visualizations, aided by reading...

Students explore The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  In this book review lesson, students examine the elements included in a book review, such as author, opinions of the book, summary, character information, main points and plot summary....

Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...

Review the terms denotation, connotation, diction, and mood in paragraph writing. After defining the terms, middle schoolers practice writing examples of both connotation and denotation. They complete a connotation and denotation...

Students investigate the dramatic elements of a Streetcar Named Desire. In this drama instructional activity, students explore the theme of the Tennessee Williams play as they read the play and watch performances of some of the acts....

Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...

Students examine American culture through research on various soap opera websites. They access a soap opera website, participate in a chat group, evaluate the contents of the website, and write a summary of a character and plot.

Students summarize a story, identify the plot structure, and create a symbol that represents the essence of the story.

Students explore The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. In this plot summary lesson, students read the book and take notes about the plot.  Students write a plot summary of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Students will explore And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.  In this analysis lesson, students read And Then There Were None and take notes about the book as they read. Students write a plot summary of the book. 

Students consider the structure of folktales. In this writing skills instructional activity, students list the attributes of folktales that they read in class. Students then complete handouts based on the elements of the tales as well as...

Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record...

Middle schoolers read a short selection of a story individually or as a class. On their own, they create a story pyramid for the selection and write a one page summary. They use text from the story for their supporting details. To end...

For classes tackling To Kill a Mockingbird, this lesson plan sets readers up for discussions or essay writing with questions and prompts. The prompts encourage individuals to explore beyond the novel itself, looking at...