Grow an understanding of short story with a well-sequenced plan built around an Academy Award-winning short film. Class members explore the elements of an effective short story, and practice writing their own. They also watch the short...

Students read "Frog and Toad are Friends" and investigate physical, emotional, and mental character traits. They brainstorm a list of character traits that make a good friend. The list is placed into a visual ranking system that is...

In response to reading Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, individuals are asked to complete a multi-genre writing assignment, crafting eight different pieces including a research paper.

In this creative writing worksheet, students sort through old pictures and discuss the characterization in each. Students create characters, a setting, and their own tall tale or urban legend based on the pictures.

How is Louisiana connected to the Holocaust? After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders complete a research report about a survivor of the Holocaust who currently resides in Louisiana. Though the idea is a good way to...

Seventh graders are able to use active listening skills, take notes and identify literary elements of a short story. They use/create graphic organizer, compare/contrast literary elements from various stories and compare and contrast traits.

Students watch various interpretations of Shakespeare's Macbeth in film. In groups, they examine the setting, characters, music and sequence. They compare and contrast the various films and discuss the differences. They write an essay on...

The best way to be a good writer is to read good writing. Learners read and discuss an excerpt from a book that will help them comprehend the relationship between setting and character. They will use what they've gleaned from discussion...

What a great activity. Kids create humorous ceramic character (heads) spikes to enliven a planter. Modern art is full of expressive and exaggerated forms and your class gets to create them out of clay. This would be a lovely activity to...

Through reading and writing, learners explore common elements found in fairy tales. After discussing traditional fairy tales, class members listen to The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by John Scieszka, a hilarious retelling of the...

Women were in the workplace long before Rosie the Riveter pushed up her sleeve. Learn about the working options available to women during the Industrial Revolution, the Progressive Era, and the Great Depression with a lesson that...

In this character education worksheet, students examine situations where they could show kindness. Students also learn the word forms: kind, kindly, kindness. Students read 6 illustrated situations and place the proper form of "kind" in...

Organize the characters in Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic according to their shared character traits. After listing character traits as a class, kids note which characters exhibit particular characteristics with a...

Is money the root of all evil, or the answer to everyone's dreams? Analyze the role of money in John Steinbeck's The Pearl with a writing prompt where kids imagine that they have won the lottery, and must think about the ways it will...

Dive your class into the novel The Pinballs by Betsy Byars with the support of this reading guide. Including short answer questions, a multiple choice comprehension quiz, and extension activities, a variety of materials are...

Learners compare the Native American version of Cinderella to the more popular version they know. They compare legends with fairy tales and explore character traits and discuss the meaning of good character. They write a fairy tale of...

Students understand the definition of integrity and explain quotes about it. In this integrity lesson, students apply quotes about integrity to a personal experience and write about it.

Invite your pupils to create original Greek characters and myths for their characters to star in. Similar to a traditional Greek myth, the story must explain a natural phenomenon, depict a struggle between good and evil characters, and...

Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...

Cool! Do you ned a way to increase vocabulary development and study a story's characters? What a great idea. Use this semantic analysis chart to study new vocabulary and the characters that appear in The Outsiders. You could also use...

Middle schoolers describe the characters of Walk Two Moons as they write biopoems. Following the pattern provided, young writers depict their chosen characters' traits and experiences to make their poems unique.

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...