Cinderella wants to go to the ball and marry the prince. At the end of the story, she does! But how does the plot move from the exposition to the resolution? Teach language arts learners and fairy tale fans about the basics of plot...

People who pen poetry positively need to know basic tenets and terms of poetry, like alliteration and consonance, for example. These and other terms are define and illustrated. Then viewers are given an object and asked to craft a...

Guide young readers through their first book report with a story map designed for a Dr. Seuss book. After your class finishes their story of choice, they list the title, characters, conflict, and other elements of literature on the book...

Kids look at a beautiful work of art to practice grammar, make connections from life to art, and sketching. They identify all the parts of grammar they see in the image, discuss what they see and do on a picnic, and then draw an imaged...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...

Budding novelists work on character development by relating to the characters in their stories. They imagine their own hopes and dreams and recall those of characters from books they've read. Learners also consider struggles the...

Introduce young actors to the meanings of basic drama literary, technical and performance elements with this colorful presentation.

The second lesson in a series of fourteen, this plan takes the short story basics a step further. Learners complete a quiz about the story from the previous day, discuss the text, learn about Anton Chekhov, and work in groups to begin...

If anyone suffers from metrophobia—the fear of poetry—the PowerPoint on the elements of poetry may help alleviate their worries. The presentation introduces learners to poetic elements, including simile, metaphor, and personification....

Middle schoolers practice evaluating art by creating a research project and presentation. They use the Internet and library to discover a piece of art or artist whom they feel has an impact on the world of art. Next, they create a...

Elevate children's reading comprehension skills with this collection of guided reading resources. From paper dice with basic comprehension questions printed on them to a system for using sticky notes to identify key...

Quiz your class on basic comprehension of the novel Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. This resource is made up of ten straightforward multiple choice questions about the characters, setting, and plot of the novel. Learners receive...

If you need a lesson for your poetry unit, use two poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Rain in Summer" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp") and a resource on Elements of Poetry. The lesson plan guides you through activities...

Prepare your learners to identify figurative language in poetry. Tips for reading poetry and what to look for are listed on these slides. Rhetorical devices are defined and plenty of examples are given. 

Once upon a time are four words most children are familiar with when reading a fairy tale. But do they know that fairy tales are a great way to learn the literary elements of reading and writing? Use a thorough fairy tale unit...

Introduce your class to ekphrastic poetry with an exercise that asks them to examine Edward Hooper's painting House by the Railroad and Edward Hirsch's poem "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad." After a close reading...

Young readers use graphic organizers, such as Venn diagrams and story maps, to analyze a variety of folktales and the elements of a story. They use writing, sequencing activities, and creative art to identify the morals learned from a...

Alliterative adjective nicknames generate stories inspired by Rosemary Wells' book Noisy Nora (also a thematic complement to any class with children who make a ruckus to get attention). Class members explore basic story elements --...

The writing of Haiku poems is the focus of this language arts lesson. In it, the basic elements of Haiku poetry are presented, and then a step-by-step set of instructions on how to create a Haiku poem along with an illustration is...

What makes a poem a poem? Give your class a basic understanding of some of the different aspects of poetry by showing them a slide show of poetic devices and elements. The presentation is quite long, so you might split it up into a few...

Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

This brief quiz on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens tests basic, surface-level plot knowledge. Many of the questions are not important to the larger themes of the novel. If you use this quiz, make sure you check over the content, as...