After sharing chapter 19 of Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls as an example of emotion-evoking writing, the students will write their own detailed and emotional paragraphs. Students can draw from background knowledge of a real...

A rich resource for teaching this complex play, these 17 pages in .pdf format offer background, teaching suggestions for before, during and after reading the play as well as other features. Requires Adobe Reader.

Four pages of chapter summary, character description, background information and classroom activity suggestions are offered in .pdf format.

Shmoop's study guide for Orson Scott Card's science fiction novel, Ender's Game, includes chapter summaries, character descriptions, explanation of themes, and analysis of various elements in the novel. It also offers study questions and...

This is the sixth in a series of articles designed to help the new writer with their novel. This article focuses on conflict and how it effects the characters and the plot of the story. W.11-12.3a Narratives

This is the eighth article in a series that focuses on helping the new novel author. This article looks at how the author can avoid creating stumbling blocks that disrupt the flow of the novel.

This is the ninth article in a series that focuses on helping the new novel author. This article focuses on what the author calls "A, B, and C Characters," used to describe the different levels of characters.

This is the eleventh article in a series that is designed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how to eliminate needless information in your novel. The key is to not explain too much about the action.

A great resource outlining four major ways to make settings appear more real and genuine in fiction. Deals with themes such as motion, experience, mood, and the senses. W.11-12.3d Sensory/precise lang narratives

This lesson plan is based on the PBS episode of American Masters about Truman Capote. Students will read and analyze how Truman Capote develops characters as they record their findings on worksheets included with this lesson. Then...

An interesting article concerning the importance of setting to any piece of fiction. Gives good information about how setting affects characters and "world-building."

This character file was created by a 5th/6th grade student in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, as part of a Learning expedition on architecture. Though only one is shown here, each student's character file (CF) tells the detailed life story,...

A thorough Wikipedia description of the computer character encoding scheme known as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

A complete Wikipedia description of the computer character encoding scheme known as Unicode.

A 5th/6th grade student in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, created this character file (CF) as part of a Learning expedition on local scientists. As part of the expedition, students surveyed all of the fields that are considered the hard...

A description of the importance of using Unicode and how it can be used in different software applications and contexts.

As a part of a week-long unit about bats, the students will identify the characteristics of a bat and organize the facts using Think-sheets. Student understanding will be enhanced with the use of books, poems, lectures, discussions,...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Read an excerpt from Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden and highlight words that describe Mary's looks in blue and words that describe her actions in red.

[Free Registration/Login Required] Read an excerpt from Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling, and highlight words that describe the duckling's looks in blue, the way he was treated in red, and how he felt in green.

[Free Registration/Login Required] William Golding's life comes alive in this informative flipchart discussing his early life and writing career.

This site has a brief description of the differences in particles in a gas, liquid, and solid. Animated microscopic pictures demonstrate the molecular movement in each state. Information is then summarized in an easy-to-read chart.

This lesson introduces how to describe characters from a work of fiction.

This site is a personal site from Caro Clarke. The third installment in this series looks at the four major mistakes made by beginning authors. The main idea of this article is that the author needs to be able to combine dialogue with...

This is a guide to the reading of Act II of Macbeth. It offers background information, links to vocabulary, a summary of the act, hyperlinked notes, the text of the act, questions, and an alternative text. It also provides three tasks:...