Curated OER
Make Up Your Story
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...
Curated OER
Dramatic Structure
As part of an lesson involving literature or writing, have your learners watch and discuss this presentation on plot development. In a series of slides, viewers engage in an activity to explore dramatic structure, including plot...
Curated OER
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Study Help Essay Questions
Use these study questions to test your class on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. These mostly higher-level questions have the potential to be test questions, discussion questions, homework questions, or essay questions. The...
Curated OER
Creating Characters in Storytelling
In this six-slide presentation, pupils are coached to used strong verbs and adverbs to help them create impact and interest in their original story writing. Other tips include: using paragraphs for each part of the story, using similes...
Curated OER
Sorting Characters in More Than One Way
Introduce your class to characterization. Familiar story characters are sorted into "good" and "bad" categories based on the characters' personalites and actions in the story. The class discusses and describes characters they have read...
Curated OER
Horse Character: Ceramics Lesson
Animals oftentimes elicit various characteristics which make them symbolic or representative of human feeling, action, or emotion. The class creates horse characters out of clay to show character action and symbolism. This is a great...
Scholastic
Calligraphy Minibook
Engage young learners in practicing their counting skills while teaching them about the Japanese writing system with this printable book. Using the included key that shows the kanji characters for the numbers 1-10, children count the...
EngageNY
Inferring About Characters Based on How They Respond to Challenges (Chapter 4: "Los Higos/Figs")
How do you know what a character's personality is like if an author doesn't tell you? With a focus on character development in Esperanza Rising, pupils complete a jigsaw activity to analyze the actions of Mama, Abuelita, and Miguel. Once...
Curated OER
Shizuko’s Daughter: Unsent Letter
Have you ever wanted to tell a character what you really thought of him or her? Use a lesson based on Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter to encourage learners to write a letter in response to a character's actions.
EngageNY
Analyzing Language, Character, and Theme: World Café Discussion
As part of their study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, class members meet in a drama circle to discuss and role-play scenes from the play. They then engage in an activity called World Cafe, analyzing the characters' actions from the text....
Curated OER
Character Traits
Sixth graders explore details from a story to develop ideas and opinions about character traits. Using a Smart Board, 6th graders create a chart explaining the character's action and traits. In groups, students discuss and describe...
Curated OER
Bend it Like Beckham--Getting to Know the Characters
For this character study worksheet, students answer 14 short answer questions based on the characters actions in the book, Bend it Like Beckham. Students also read a glossary of words that appear in the text. This worksheet also includes...
Curated OER
Character's Motive
Sixth graders determine a character's motive while reading a text. In this motive lesson, 6th graders discuss motivation and how that can impact a character's actions. Students read passages about suspects and try to solve a crime while...
Do2Learn
Reading Response Form
What makes a character believable? Have learners write a response to this question by explaining why they found the characters in a given story or novel to be believable or not believeable.
Curriculum Corner
Fiction Graphic Organizers
Get an in-depth look into a narrative text with a three-page worksheet that examines a story's character—actions, sayings, thoughts, and appearance—setting, and challenges scholars to write a brief summary about what they've read.
Film Education
The Jungle Book
Accompany a viewing of Disney's live-action feature film, The Jungle Book, with a packet equipped with several activities focused on story elements. Scholars discuss and complete diagrams and charts about the movie's characters, setting,...
Roald Dahl
Matilda - Miss Honey and The Trunchbull
As the instructor reads aloud several quotes from five chapters of the story Matilda, class members mime their interpretation of the scenes. Then, after reading "Miss Honey" and "The Trenchbull" (chapters seven and eight), the class...
Curated OER
Writing and Presenting a Fable Using Research
Elementary and middle schoolers research animal facts and use them in a fable. First, they pair-share to find animal traits to use in writing a fable. They then complete a prewriting worksheet. After going through the writing process,...
Curated OER
Classical Dramatic Structure: Resolving a Character's Conflict
How does plot drive a play? Show this 20-slide presentation to describe the different parts of a plot. Basic vocabulary terms are included like climax, turning point, rising action, and denouement. Present this resource before reading a...
Curated OER
Contrasting Characters
Students analyze characters in a story and contrast them in terms of their appearance, education, family, religion, and more. In this characters lesson plan, students fill out a worksheet provided.
Curated OER
Characters' Feelings Or Motives
Fourth graders use the text, "Fair's Fair" to examine how characters' feelings and motives are built throughout a text through descriptive phrases. They look at what a character does and says to record on their writing frames. Finally,...
PB Works
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
Record the plot elements of The Cay on this worksheet. Pupils note basic information about the book and answer questions about the introduction, point of view, character, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution of...
Curated OER
Around the Room Short Story
Collective story writing is a great way to reinforce the concept of story elements and collaborative learning. Young writers discuss story elements such as, setting, character, action, climax, conclusion, foreshadowing, dialogue, and...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 7: The Elements of Story
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...