Curated OER
Writing Short Stories: The Fun Way
Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...
Book Units Teacher
Story Elements
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 (both flat and...
Curated OER
Teaching The Great Gatsby with the New York Times
East Egg, West Egg, the Valley of Ashes, and the green light. Bring Gatsby, the Jazz Age, and the American Dream to your classroom with a resource designed for teachers. Included in the treasury are six great teaching ideas for F. Scott...
Curated OER
Illustrating the Elements of a Story
Explore the elements of a story with this two-page graphic organizer. Readers write and draw descriptions of each element, including setting, plot, conflict, rising action, climax, dialogue, and narration.
Dick Blick Art Materials
Painted Story Quilt
Creating story quilts is a great way to combine art, social studies and literature. Kids select a story, a published one or one of their own, to illustrate, paint on a canvas square, embellish, and mount on a felt backing.
K12 Reader
Setting the Scene: Great Expectations
Expect great things from this reading comprehension exercise that asks readers to cite evidence from the provided passages of Great Expectations to support the inference that Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham, and her room, are indeed strange.
Curated OER
Great Expectations: Group Writing
Examine the differences between totalitarianism and democracy in this writing lesson. Using the same format and theme from Great Expectations, young writers work in pairs to compose their own short stories. They follow guidelines for the...
PBS
Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird
Can you understand more about how a person acts by learning about how that person lives? An interactive resource explores the setting of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with several slides discussing the location, social conditions,...
Curated OER
Sound/Story
High schoolers combine creativity with the rigor of careful editing by adding music to their story. It forces them to focus on how they communicate the meaning of their story to the listener.
Curated OER
Setting the Story: Techniques for Creating a Realistic Setting
“It was a dark and stormy night.” Thus begins the 1830's novel Paul Clifford and, of course, all of Snoopy’s novels! Encourage young writers to craft settings for their stories that go beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s often-mocked phrase...
Curated OER
Adventure Story
It's always fun to make up something together as a class. This fine lesson has children make up and illustrate a collaborative adventure story. The essential elements of a good story (setting, characters, plot, help, conclusion) are all...
Curated OER
Story Openings
What a terrific exploration of writing! This resource focuses on how to write a great beginning for a narrative piece. It is a thoughtful and helpful look at this topic.
Curated OER
Ordering Stories
What happened first? Learners examine four sets of images to sequence events using ordinal numbers. There is an example to get them started, and the first two have three pictures to organize. The final story is more challenging with four...
Curated OER
Two Settings
Learners respond to the text Riding Freedom. They will compare and contrast two settings by filling in a graphic organizer. They explore different settings, discuss the reasons why settings change, and draw conclusions using descriptive...
Curated OER
Jim Murphy, The Great Fire - Grade 6
The Great Fire by Jim Murphy provides the text for a study of the Chicago fire of 1871. The plan is designed as a close reading activity so that all learners have the same background information require for writing. Richly detailed, the...
Reed Novel Studies
The Great Gatsby: Novel Study
Some people believe that no matter how hard a man works, the American dream will always remain out of reach. A study guide for The Great Gatsby explores the themes, such as the illusory American dream, and elements of F. Scott...
National Humanities Center
Teaching The Great Gatsby: A Common Core Close Reading Seminar
The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...
Film English
The Man Who Planted Trees
Grow an understanding of short story with a well-sequenced plan built around an Academy Award-winning short film. Class members explore the elements of an effective short story, and practice writing their own. They also watch the short...
Arts Midwest
The Joy Luck Club: Culture and History
Explore San Francisco's Chinatown in a instructional activity about the first few chapters of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Kids research Chinatown on the Internet and create a virtual tour of the neighborhood, including the foods,...
Curated OER
Hemingway's Short Stories - Essay Questions
Ernest Hemingway is one of America's great writers. After reading one (or several) of his short stories, visit this list of 24 questions relating to at least 10 of his short stories. Some of the questions are basic recall questions, and...
August House
The Archer and the Sun
Reinforce reading comprehension with a instructional activity about The Archer and the Sun, a Chinese folktale. Kids learn some background information about Chinese culture before reading the story, and answer literacy questions as they...
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...
EngageNY
Relationships Between Quantities and Reasoning with Equations and Their Graphs
Graphing all kinds of situations in one and two variables is the focus of this detailed unit of daily lessons, teaching notes, and assessments. Learners start with piece-wise functions and work their way through setting up and solving...
Positively Autism
Waiting While Riding in the Car
Traffic and stop lights can be a bother for even the most patient person, but when you have autism, that extra time spent in a hot car can be a real nuisance. Here is a great story that addresses the need to be patient while waiting or...