Students write a story. In this genre lesson, students read a science fiction story and discuss its characteristics. Students brainstorm a list of things that if scientifically changed would alter the way we live our lives. Students...

Use hypertext to make a multimedia choose-your-own adventure story! Young writers incorporate knowledge of story writing elements to write their own stories, and rewrite the adventure with various scenarios and endings. Use technology to...

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Real or fantasy? Dogzilla, the Giant of Barletta, the Garden of Abdul Gassazi. To enrich their understanding of incredible stories, teams create a mouse newspaper and report on the invasion of Dogzilla, craft folktales, and draft a...

Students observe and demonstrate how to decipher and organize the information in a math word problem and apply mathematical concepts to different story problems. They discuss the parts of a story problem, and write their own original...

This resource contains summaries of the stories featured, but limited procedural detail. Readers compare Chopin's stories' use of situational irony and foreshadowing. High interest content (questionable paternity, missing persons) for...

Youngsters retell the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They write a sentence for speech bubbles for a character in the story, identify the phrases that can be used for retelling a story, and in small groups write a sentence for the...

There's nothing like the prospect of writing a scary story to get your middle schoolers' writing juices flowing! In the lesson presented here, pupils listen to scary short stories read to them by the teacher. Then, a discussion ensues...

Invite your kids to tell all sorts of stories with this interactive app. Learners view images and record their own voices as as they create short narratives to go along with the images. The app provides plenty of...

Fifth graders develop and practice the steps involved in imaginative writing. They follow the steps/worksheets included and write imaginative stories of their own.

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

Scatter plots tell a story about the data — you just need to be able to read it! Building from the previous lesson in the series where learners created scatter plots, they now learn how to find associations in those scatter plots....

Compare and contrast up to three stories with this graphic organizer! There are designated squares to capture information regarding the characters, setting, and problems of each story. Which are similar, and which are different? This...

Learning about literature can be so much fun; it can also be made more accessible through projects and dramatic play. As they explore theme, character, and setting, the class gets creative and makes a dramatic recreation of a classic...

Teach your English language learners how to talk about their families with three weeks of lessons. Over the course of the thematic unit, learners pick up new vocabulary so that they can talk about families and relationships, clothing,...

Explore language arts by reading two similar stories in order to compare and contrast them in class. Young readers read two Aunt Isabel books, by Kate Duke, and discuss the main characters, plot, and setting. They complete a graphic...

“Mirrors” or aspects from a story that reflect a personal text-to-self connection, and “windows,” an aspect that gives insight into a different way of being, are the focus of an activity designed for Alice Walker’s story. Readers select...

Explore the concept of retelling a story with the Gingerbread Man. Read various gingerbread man stories with your class. They will create character puppets and retell the story to one another and in small groups. Additionally, they will...

Use O. Henry's ubiquitous tale of love and poverty to explore irony. After reading the story, middle schoolers identify examples of all three kinds of irony in the story. With partners, they brainstorm original examples of irony. Then...

Do you want to live forever? After reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” class groups adopt the roles of an ethics committee, product manufacturers, concerned scientists, and potential users of an...

Young learners who feel good about themselves will fare better in the long run than those who do not have a high level of self-esteem. Introduce youngsters to what it means to like themselves. Discuss positive characteristics and...

Young language arts learners write and illustrate a short fantasy story based on the book Corduroy. First, learners need to develop a character. Then, through their writing and illustrations, they take their characters on adventures...

After reading The Cricket in Times Square chapter titled "Caught in the Kitchen," learners list three describing details about the characters and setting. Groups collaborate to find sensory details to support their character assertions....

Do you have a lot of different reading levels in your class? Pair kids up by level and have them choose a book to read independently. They will make predictions, ask questions, make connections, etc. Consider creating a general reading...