A short story is only as strong as its characters, development, and conflicts. Encourage the young authors in your class to plan their stories based on the elements of narrative writing, all provided in brainstorming graphic organizers.

As an introduction to Sharon Creexh's Walk Two Moons, a volunteer dons a pair of boots and walks about the classroom.Observers then ponder the axiom, Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his...

Graphing all kinds of situations in one and two variables is the focus of this detailed unit of daily lessons, teaching notes, and assessments. Learners start with piece-wise functions and work their way through setting up and solving...

It can be difficult to find the theme of a book or story if you don't know the questions to ask. Teach your kids to discern the universal theme in works of literature with a set of activities that promote critical thinking and...

Explore a trailblazing way to talk about innovation. Using the Scratch coding program, young computer scientists create innovations and write stories to accompany them. They include some of the add-ons they mastered throughout the unit.

Anita's iconic rooftop ode to American life in West Side Story is the focus of a lesson on immigration. As class members listen to "America," they follow along with printed lyrics, and discuss whether they agree with Anita's...

"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...

Support learners who may be very shy or reserved in saying "hello" to new people with this set of story slides. The presentation begins with a few slides describing why it is good to greet others, and concludes with opportunities to...

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...

Cinderella is a classic love story when Cinderella is the protagonist—but what happens if a stepsister tells the story? Focus on point of view with a lesson about fairy tales and story elements. After reading a few familiar fairy tales,...

Help young learners understand friendship and empathy with two reading comprehension lessons. Each lesson focuses on a story about a child with autism, and encourages readers to compare and contrast the characters to each other and to...

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...

Scatter plots tell a story about the data — you just need to be able to read it! Building from the previous lesson in the series where learners created scatter plots, they now learn how to find associations in those scatter plots....

Teach your English language learners how to talk about their families with three weeks of lessons. Over the course of the thematic unit, learners pick up new vocabulary so that they can talk about families and relationships, clothing,...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Don't part with a resource on partitive division. Continuing along the lines of the previous lesson, pupils create stories for division problems, this time for partitive division problems. Trying out different situations and units allows...

The brother-sister pair Carlos and Clarita need your class's help in developing their new pet sitting business. Through a variety of scenarios and concerns presented to the siblings, the learners thoroughly explore systems of equations...

Many regard John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as the great American novel. The lesson plan combines a variety of strategies, including partner work, independent practice, creative writing, grammar instruction, and small group...

Show young readers how to put some personality and voice into their storytelling with an in-depth assignment. Kids practice saying the same thing, such as counting from one to ten, in different tones and perspectives, and then work on...

The ninth installment of a 21-part module has pupils compare integers and rational numbers in decimal and fraction form. They match stories to number lines and compare values in the stories.

Celebrate Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss' birthday with this compare and contrast graphic organizer in which three stories are examined for their setting, characters, problems, events, and solution. 

Two versions of movie trailers for the film Mary Poppins launch a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lesson about how mood and tone impact a reader's experience of work. Using the provided list, readers identify the words that create the...

Roller coaster cars traveling along a graph create quite a story! The lesson analyzes both linear and non-linear graphs. Learners determine the intervals that a graph is increasing and/or decreasing and to locate maximum and/or...

Your class used to be confused about verb tenses, but now they understand more about the past tense! Practice the different ways to use used to in writing with a clear slideshow presentation, which includes negative and positive...