Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to Short Story Writers Say
There are so many authors of short stories, and your class can have the chance to study quite a few. This seventh lesson plan in a series of fourteen continues the decision-making process for the final assessment: a short story author...
IPDAE
Themes in Short Stories
"What is the theme of this story?" The very question can spark fear in the minds of readers and incinerate confidence. Here you will discover an exercise that shows how writers use the tools of setting, plot, conflict, and...
Curated OER
Mini-Lesson Planning for Inferences
Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...
K5 Learning
The Parade
Parades are a joy to watch and learn about. Class members read about a child who attended a parade with her mother and brother, match past tense verbs from the reading, identify and fill in blanks for sight words candy,...
K12 Reader
Tension in the Pit and the Pendulum
Readers will get a peculiar thrilling sensation from this reading comprehension exercise that asks them to identify how Poe uses repetition and sensory language to build tension in his short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum."
K20 LEARN
Totally Different Stories: Perspective
Two stories by Kate Chopin provide high school freshmen with an opportunity to reflect on the importance of the perspective from which a story is told. Class members read "The Story of an Hour" and a passage from The Awakening, then...
K5 Learning
I Have Been Thinking…
Scholars read a short story about a girl visiting her grandmother, identify the main idea of the tale, and then write a sentence about this idea. Learners practice their phonics skills by filling in word blanks with letters to complete...
K5 Learning
My Little Kitty
Can the small cat catch the rat? Find out in a short passage designed for first graders, complete with four comprehension questions that address details from the text.
K20 LEARN
The Most Dangerous Game
Readers of "The Most Dangerous Game" must argue which of Richard Connell's characters is the protagonist or antagonist. The lesson begins with scholars reading selected passages from the story and making predictions about who they...
Novelinks
The House on Mango Street: Question Answer Relationships Strategy
Good readers question text as they read. The Question Answer Relationships Strategy (QAR) used in this resource with The House on Mango Street, provides readers with a concrete approach for questioning Sandra Cisneros' text and...
Roanoke County Public Schools
Be a Sequence Detective!
Authors are constantly leaving clues that help the reader to understand the sequence of events in a story. Teach young readers how to pick up on these key temporal words and phrases with this slide show. After an introduction to commonly...
K12 Reader
Narrative or Expository?
Narrative or expository? That is the question readers face on a two-part comprehension worksheet that asks kids to read a short passage about these two different types of writing, and then to answer a series of comprehension questions...
K12 Reader
Making Connections to Text
This short reading comprehension learning exercise encourages readers to make self-to text, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections as a way of remembering what they have read.
Common Sense Media
The Masque of the Red Death
Poe goes high tech with a lesson that asks high schoolers to use the internet and various apps as they read and analyze "The Masque of the Red Death." In addition to responding to comprehension questions in Quizlet, they use Minecraft to...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 4
Connect with the text using helpful annotation strategies. As your class reads the first section of Karen Russell's short story, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," they note important passages that establish character...
K12 Reader
The Jungle Book
Young readers complete a graphic organizer identifying the main idea and the supporting ideas in a passage taken from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
Curated OER
"Their Eyes Were Watching God": Folk Speech and Figurative Language
Using or considering using Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God? Then this packet is a must for your curriculum library. The examination of how Hurston combines folklore and folk language to create the voice of her...
K5 Learning
Robert Fulton – Steamboat Inventor
Examine the life of steamboat inventor, Robert Fulton, through reading comprehension worksheet that includes both multiple choice and short answer questions. Then, take part in a word search and write definitions, words, and...
Curated OER
With Detective Fiction in the Urban Classroom
This abstract for an instructional unit using three-minute mysteries, stories by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe includes a short history of detective fiction, sample plans, and suggestions for exercises and activities...
K12 Reader
Revise Your Writing
The importance of revising writing is the focus of a short reading comprehension worksheet that asks readers to respond to a series of questions based on the article.
Lafayette Parrish School System
Teaching Tone and Mood
Tone and Mood are not synonymous! Introduce young readers to these literary devices with a series of exercises that not only point out the significant differences between the terms but also shows them how to identify both the tone and...
K12 Reader
Customs and Traditions
Here's a two-part reading comprehension worksheet that asks kids to read a short passage about the customs and traditions of Native American tribes and then to answer a series of questions based on the article.
Teach It Primary
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Six tasks make up a lesson plan designed to reinforce comprehension and language skills using the poem "The Pied Piper" by Robert Browing. Scholars discuss and define unknown words, identify adjectives and onomatopoeia, review...
Louisiana Department of Education
Fahrenheit 451
In his 2013 introduction to Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman states, “Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” In this extraordinary unit plan, readers "explore the power of written language to educate and...