Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

"What is the theme of this story?" The very question can spark fear in the minds of readers and incinerate confidence. Here you will discover an exercise that shows how writers use the tools of setting, plot, conflict, and...

A great addition to a multicultural unit or curriculum study, use the set of questions based on Pam Muñoz Ryan's Mice and Beans to engage learners and enhance their reading experience. As youngsters read, they...

Explore ocean habitats with a instructional activity that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original...

Language arts is made up of many parts. Learners review the parts of a sentence, as well as how to make a simple sentence into a complex sentence, before examining full paragraphs and identifying the topic, body, and concluding sentence...

Get ready to read The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 with a activity about historical fiction. Spanning several centuries, the resource prompts learners to guess the historical era of a story based on a word or...

Teach your young readers how to summarize a text using a strategy called Somebody Wanted But So. Kids identify the character (Somebody), the motivation (Wanted), the conflict (But), and the resolution (So). The resource comes with...

How does or society punish people who break the law? What effect does guilt have on a person's life? In what way does or society demand we conform to certain conventions? Such questions, found in this study guide, are sure to...

Introduce "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namioka to your middle schoolers with a reader's resource page. It includes links to different activities, including a creative writing prompt about losing fifty years of your life, and a...

Family and Friends is the theme of a unit consisting of English language development lessons. Reinforce language proficiency, particularly in family vocabulary, basic needs, feelings, short vowel sounds, blending, reading high frequency...

If you're tired of defining allusion, onomatopoeia, and satire for your language arts students, hand out a complete list of literary devices to keep the terms straight. Each term includes a definition that is easy to understand and...

If you're planning on including Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles in your science fiction unit, use a concept analysis guide to frame your instruction. It covers literary elements such as setting, narrative voice, and theme, as...

Considering using Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies? Here's a resource designed to be used before and during a reading of her powerful story of the murder of the Mirabal sisters. Included in the packet is a vocabulary...

Bloom's Taxonomy is a great way to address the many levels of comprehension. With explanations and examples of each level, you can create questions that focus on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Shiver me timbers, this here resource is a great way to teach young landlubbers to speak the language of the briny deep. Including over 30 different words and phrases, complete with definitions and guide words, this dictionary will...

Review where quotation marks belong and what they are used to indicate. From direct speech to in-text citations, young writers will find this worksheet quite useful. Several exercises at the bottom, along with a key, give learners...

Let's Look Around! is the theme of a unit that offers a plethora of challenge activities. Enhance your scholars' learning experiences and reinforce concepts with activities such as writing a book about farm animals, an...

Are your pupils ready to move beyond a thesis statement by adding additional detail to their introductory paragraphs? Provide this handout to give your class some ideas for spiffing up their work. The page includes a sample paragraph...

This unit from the Yale University on elements of the short story is designed to develop student comprehension skills, particularly making inferences and generalizing. It also involves students in reading a number of short stories to...

Short explanation of setting as a literary term. Written in the context of "What makes a good short story?" A link at the bottom of the page leads to additional information about setting.

Read Edward Everett Hale's famous short story here. Scroll down and choose "Previous," for criticism and interpretation of the story by Henry S. Canby.

Here, read "The Tale," by Joseph Conrad. The full text of this short story is 12 pages long.

Read Joseph Conrad's "The Warrior's Soul." Full text of this short story is 12 pages long.

At this website, read Thomas Hardy's short story, "Squire Petrick's Lady."