Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to...

Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...

After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...

Is that your final answer? Scholars discuss the terms, edit, and revise. They then complete their final drafts as the end-of-unit assessment of Unbroken. Writers use their graded draft essays from a previous instructional activity to...

"The Dinner Party" is the anchor text in a lesson designed to encourage writers to use sensory details in their stories. After brainstorming descriptive words and phrases for the five senses, class members read Mona Gardner's...

There is more going on under the surface of Ernest Hemingway's work than one can glean in an initial reading. A literature resource compares the themes and structures of several of Hemingway's works before prompting class members to use...

Craft your own fairy tale based on Momotaro, a Japanese story referenced in Kyoko Mori's Shuzuko's Daughter. A list of nouns guide learners in writing their own story, and predicting what might happen in the novel.

Enhance and extend instruction of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin with one or all of these ideas. You might want to cover characterization and summary, or improve understanding of context clues and irony. You can cover any...

Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...

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...

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.

Let Y represent Yes to using an excellent resource. Pupils first learn to define variables using a complete description in the 19th part in a series of 36. They write expressions involving addition and subtraction in real-world...

Strengthen the bonds of friendship within your class with a reading of E.B. White's award-winning novel, Charlotte's Web. Focusing on the unique characters in the story and the relationships they develop, young readers draw...

The eyes have it in a project that combines art with creative writing. Class members list three adjectives or characteristics of a person they admire. Then draw a picture of a pair of eyes that they feel reflects these characteristics....

Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...

Sometimes it's okay to text in school. Young computer scientists work in the Scratch program to write a text message conversation among friends. They use different sprites within the program to represent each side of the conversation to...

Young scholars write rhyming poems using rebus. With pictures instead of words, authors create original work about things they love. 

You can't read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory without craving the rich treats described in Dahl's vivid prose. Young writers try their hands at sensory language with a lesson plan that prompts them to write about...

Today's discussion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X focuses on the precise words, the telling phrases, and the sensory details Haley uses to enliven his story. Writers then work to incorporate these same techniques in the draft of their...

As this short story unit comes to a close, provide a day for a full examination of theme and allow some time in class for individuals to work on their various assessments. This final lesson before presenting iMovies and portfolios is the...

Encourage scholars to share their love of reading with informative and engaging book reviews. Here, you'll find a series of guides that walk learners through the review writing process. Included in the collection is information about...

Create your own adventure story ... well, not really. The fifth instructional activity in a 21-part series has pairs create story contexts for division problems. The instructional activity presents a step-by-step process for pupils to...

A instructional activity 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...

After reading background information about Kate Chopin, pupils complete their shared reading of her short story, "The Story of an Hour."  Participants then consider the irony of the ending.