Curated OER
Developing Reading Comprehension
Developing reading comprehension is an ongoing process that begins the moment a child becomes engaged with literature. From learning the skills to navigate a picture book to reading an assigned chapter in a chemistry text, good...
Curated OER
Imagining Your Science Fiction Short Story
Twelfth graders brainstorm ideas for their own science fiction story. Using worksheets, they sketch the plot and setting for their story. They create appropriate characters and develop their interactions among each other. They share...
Curated OER
Analyzing the Use of Irony in a Short Story
Ninth graders examine how literature connects to real-life and see how irony aids in the development of theme. They read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and discuss elements of foreshadowing and situational irony. Then learners will write...
Curated OER
Writing a Personal Letter Using the Short Story "Eleven"
Challenge your class to connect to the text of "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros with this activity, which prompts them to write a personal letter from the main character's point of view. The story, prompt, and letter template are all included...
Fabius-Pompey School District
Paired Passage Practice and the Extended Response Question
How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...
Common Sense Media
The Masque of the Red Death
Poe goes high tech with a lesson that asks high schoolers to use the internet and various apps as they read and analyze "The Masque of the Red Death." In addition to responding to comprehension questions in Quizlet, they use Minecraft to...
California Education Partners
Eleven
It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 4
Connect with the text using helpful annotation strategies. As your class reads the first section of Karen Russell's short story, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," they note important passages that establish character...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Look at Us!: English Language Development Lessons (Theme 1)
Start off your young English language learners with this packet of materials, which covers three weeks of instructions. After completing the unit, kids will have practiced the letters K through Z, read several story books, talked with...
Curated OER
Stories
Young scholars read a short story and answer questions. For this comprehension lesson, students read a short story and complete a worksheet answering comprehension questions and identifying the parts of a story. Young scholars...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Understanding Theme
The ninth in a fourteen-instructional activity series, this plan marks a sort of midpoint in a unit devoted to the study of short stories. Pupils learn about theme and work on their short story projects by adding to their blogs, checking...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Setting in "Hills Like White Elephants"
Continue your study of the short story with the next lesson plan in this fourteen-lesson plan series. After wrapping up a study of "Hills Like White Elephants" through a quiz and discussion of the setting, learners are introduced to 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...
K5 Learning
The Wolf
Fourth graders have likely heard the expression to cry wolf, but they may not know the saying's origin. A short reading passage tells the story and includes four comprehension questions for pupils to demonstrate their...
Scholastic
Dr. Seuss Extension Activities
Extend the exhilarating learning experience of Dr. Seuss with five activities designed to reinforce literacy skills—site word reading, dialogue writing, story mapping, and more! Featured stories include The Lorax,...
Rainforest Alliance
Protecting the Critical Habitat of the Manatee and Loggerhead Turtle
Explore ocean habitats with a lesson 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 short story about...
K20 LEARN
Diversity Quilt: A Lesson on Culture
After brainstorming the various aspects of cultural identity, class members interview each other, examine video clips, and read stories to discover how these aspects reveal one's cultural identity. Individuals then craft a quilt square...
K5 Learning
Musical Instruments to Play
Bring some music to your language arts lesson with a reading comprehension activity. Learners read an informational passage about different musical instruments before answering a series of comprehension and vocabulary questions.
Scholastic
Abe Lincoln Remembers Lesson Plan
Discover the life of Abraham Lincoln with help from the story Abe Lincoln Remembers by Ann Turner. After listening carefully, scholars reflect on what they deem as Lincoln's most influential life event and how it relates...
EngageNY
Grade 10 ELA Module 1: Unit 2, Lesson 13
To conclude their study of Ethan Canin’s short story “The Palace Thief,” class members use their notes and annotations to craft an expository essay response to the prompt, "Analyze how the interactions between Hundert and the Bells...
Curated OER
A Look Through My Antonia's Eyes
Students explore life as a pioneer in the late 1890's. In this appreciation of history lesson, students read excerpts from My Antonia. Students create presentations about life and culture in Nebraska. Students write an original...
Curated OER
What's the Author's Purpose?
What is the author's purpose for sharing an autobiography? Start this lesson with the short story provided about getting pulled over by a police officer. Then, discuss the acronym PIES and how it stands for the four main reasons an...
Curated OER
Bring Read-to-Learn Activities into Your Classroom
Shift your instruction from teacher-centered to student-centered, which requires learners to do the heavy lifting.
Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to Literacy Criticism
As learners continue to examine a short story of their choice, they take some time to look at analysis completed by others on the same story. In the eleventh lesson in a series of fourteen, pupils explore various sites for literary...