Are your learners only talking about the plot of the story and not the richness of the characters? Then show them how important characters are to literature with the information available here. The learner will know how authors create...

Build a caring and empathetic classroom community. This presentation provides several scenarios to discuss. It focuses on how each scene makes a person feel, then how someone else might feel. A great way to start a discussion or to build...

A 46-slide presentation focuses on ways to describe characters in stories, how to create story characters, and how to show a character's personality in a student-created story. The colorful and engaging slides provide lots of great ideas...

Help kids learn how to cope, manage, and channel their angry feelings. This slide show provides space for learners to discuss how they feel when they are angry, ways they can channel their anger, and several alternative strategies for...

A terrific presentation on the teaching of friendly letter writing. Learners engage in a PowerPoint that is part story, part writing exercise. There are lots of great tips on how to construct a letter, and young writers are encouraged to...

Start the year off with a few role-play scenarios focused on positive classroom interactions, respect, and expressing feelings. These scenarios are very oddly worded but pose a good way to help learners build empathy and caring when...

This 97-slide PowerPoint uses Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember, to illustrate the elements of a story. Setting, plot, characterization...

Have your class write stories. Learners discuss how to create a great beginning, develop a list of characters, and provide a resoulution of a story. There are some aspects of this presentation that could be altered to provide clearer and...

Middle schoolers in particular will benefit from this simple presentation. Forty slides cover story elements like the protagonist, antagonist, and setting, and literary devices are also included. Some examples are given, but for the most...

It's all well and good when you're asked to identify a speaker's tone using his or her body language, facial expression, and pitch and emphasis. Identifying the tone of a written passage is another challenge entirely. Check out an...

Powerful images set the stage for Karen Hesse's historical fiction novel, Out of the Dust. The photos, maps, quotes from the text, critical thinking questions, and background information on the Dust Bowl period are all included, and will...

Learners get together in small groups to create a set of rules, such as how to respectfully express one's opinion, and how to respect other people's opinions, even if they differ from you own. Everyone role-plays, and attempts to use the...

This lesson introduces indirect (learn about the characters through speech, thoughts, actions, physical description, other character's feelings) and direct characterization (author tells the reader about the character) in fiction...