Curated OER
The Element of Color
Eighth graders study and analyze the elements of color by creating an personalized color wheel. Emphasis is placed on constructive criticism of student work by others for assessment. Students create short poems for their color wheel...
Curated OER
Reading Short Stories
In this graphic organizer worksheet, students fill in the graphic organizer with the predictions, settings, characters, background, and more for short stories. Students complete 5 sections.
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Making Dances From Stories
After reading a short story, learners will create dances that show homophones and verbs. Their dance sequences involve three verbs and transition movements in between each verb. Tip: Have the class dance out the sequence of events from...
Minnesota Literacy Council
Grapes of Wrath and Pronouns
Many regard John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as the great American novel. The lesson plan combines a variety of strategies, including partner work, independent practice, creative writing, grammar instruction, and small group...
Curated OER
Do-deca-he-dron-It's Greek to Me!
Students create a dodecahedron shaped visual report of the literary elements of a short story.
Harvard University
The Nouns of Geometry
Socratic questioning to teach Euclidean geometry? "The Nouns of Geometry," followed by "The Verbs of Geometry," and the misfit, "A Beginner's Story - The Equilateral Triangle" are designed to encourage learners to explore various...
Curated OER
Getting to Know Characters
This set of worksheets constitutes enough work and materials to be considered a lesson. They guide readers through a process of exploring characters and their motivations, and writing a paragraph about them. Here are seven handouts that...
Columbus City Schools
Magnificent Mendeleev: An Elemental Tale
Discover how the periodic table tells the story of its elements. Learners begin by studying the makeup of several mixtures. Their analysis leads to a discussion of elements and the periodic table. As they dig deeper, they understand the...
Digital Writing and Research Lab's – Lesson Plans
Teaching Close Reading through Short Composition/Revision
This activity may have writers evaluate short compositions, but their subjects are quite tall: great Americans. Pupils read one another's compositions and closely examine how specific phrases and diction contribute to shaping American...
Curated OER
Frame Story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
Mark Twain's frame story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" provides an opportunity for a study of this story-within-a-story pattern. Using an illustrated template, class members record a plot summary of the frame story...
Curated OER
Little Red Riding Hood
Here is a short, but effective, four-slide presentation on the sequence of events in the story, Little Red Riding Hood. The elements of the story (setting, characters, plot, etc.) are present, then a slide which puts the story in order...
Curated OER
Knowledge or Instinct? Jack London's "To Build a Fire"
Students closely read " To Build a Fire," to explore the use of narrative point of view and debate the distinction between knowledge and instinct. The elements of literary naturalism and how they relate to Jack London's work is examined...
K20 LEARN
"The Lady, Or The Tiger?" Which Do You Choose?: Internal and External Conflict
"How come there's no ending?" After a close reading of Frank R. Stockton's tale "The Lady, or the Tiger?" in which scholars examine each of the main characters' conflicts and motivations, writers craft their own ending using textual...
Teaching Tolerance
Poetry and Storytelling Café
Academics take turns as actors in an engaging poetry cafe. Elementary learners work in small groups to create original poems or stories addressing community issues and read their work in front of a live audience. Scholars also reflect...
K20 LEARN
Writing An Argumentative Paragraph: Argumentative Writing
Learning how to craft a cogent argument based on a solid claim, supported with evidence and solid reasoning, is an important life skill. Teach middle schoolers about argumentative writing with a lesson asking them to analyze the claims,...
Curated OER
Scrambled Stories
Character development, setting, and plot? Sounds like the makings of a good narrative story. Young authors read and analyze several narrative examples, and then they use what they know to pen an original composition. They work both in...
Curated OER
Publishing Stories: Beginning, Middle, End
First and second graders explore the importance of having a beginning, middle, and end when writing stories. In this story writing lesson, learners write short stories using the story diamond as a guide. They invite their parents to an...
Curated OER
Short Story Group PowerPoint Project
Students choose a short story from the class literature book. They find information about the author. They read the short story from the literature textbook. They create a PowerPoint to retell the short story.
Curated OER
PowerPoint Short Story Report
Students make a Microsoft PowerPoint report from a short story read in class. They summarize and paraphrase a short story identifying the six story elements: characters, setting, plot, conflict, solution, tone/mood.
Curated OER
Short Stories Through Multimedia Presentations
Ninth graders summarize and paraphrase a short story read in class. They identify the six story elements of character, setting, plot, conflict, solution, and tone/mood. Students create a PowePoint presentation that illustrates the...
Urban Education Exchange
Lessons and Units: The Watsons go to Birmingham—1963 5TH GRADE UNIT
Get ready to read The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 with a lesson about historical fiction. Spanning several centuries, the resource prompts learners to guess the historical era of a story based on a word or phrase...
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Respect and Boundaries
Respect is a must-have in healthy relationships! Pupils explore their boundaries and identify the elements of respect during a lesson from a library of digital citizenship activities. The teacher's resource section contains a printable...
Curated OER
Talk To Me About It
Students present an analysis of a short story. Working in small groups, students prepare a presentation of up to 30 minutes analyzing the major elements in a story they have read. Completed presentations are given to the class and...
Curated OER
STORY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH JAPANESE ART
Eighth graders create a story to explain the art object being studied. The story displays students knowledge of writing conventions, elements of a short story, literary conflict, and the use of descriptive text.