Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to hone their close reading and literary analysis skills. After annotating their copy of the story, writer's craft an essay in which they analyze...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This is a film guide for the film West Side Story (1961), the musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which is set in 1950s New York and incorporates themes around street crime,...

This activity will help children build vocabulary, become familiar with essential parts of a story, and develop story sequencing skills. They can create silly stories by drawing story parts out of a bag.

Teachers will learn how to use story writing frames with their students. Teachers will learn how to implement story frames; measure progress with story frames; and find research to support using story frames. A reproducible story frame...

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...

In this lesson, 1st graders will work with "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" Jon Scieszkaby. They will describe the characters, setting, and key details in the story and help the teacher record the details on a circle map.

The National Ocean Service Education Association has put together this well supported set of articles outlining the cause and resulting effects of invasive species, primarily the Lionfish. This link begins with looking at the story of...

Young scholars will hear and read different versions of a familiar fairy tale and identify what elements a story must have (character, plot, setting) for the story to be interesting and make sense. Using a Venn diagram, students will...

Familiar fairy tales are used as guides to help students analyze the elements of the short story: plot, theme, setting, point of view, and character.

This PBS Frontline world story is about a Kenyan world class runner. The runners name is, Lornah Kiplagat, and she uses her prize money to fund a high altitudes training center in Kenya. Her facility provides women with an opportunity to...

This is the text of the short story "A Bivouac of the Dead" by Ambrose Bierce, a story with an ironic twist set in the Allegheny mountains, in Pocahontas county, West Virginia.

Lesson for early elementary and special education students utlizing the book Miss Moo Goes to the Zoo by Kelly Graves and graphic organizers to identify elements in a story (title, author, setting, characters, etc.). Students participate...

Explore the different types of rocks on our Earth as you watch a one-hour video, accompanied by learning goals, details on sedimentary rocks, fossils, and supercontinents, and more.

In this lesson plan, young scholars will engage in the technology, social studies, and language arts standards as students engage in reading by Octavia Butler's book entitled Kindred. Young scholars will research tslavery. Students will...

Text of a short story set in West Africa called "King Bemba's Point" and written by J. Landers. (Free site registration offers some additional features, e.g., the ability to insert annotations.)

This collection of activities gives young scholars a chance to discover and compare fairy tales from around the world. It provides a wealth of links to resources, printable diagrams, discussion questions and the like.

This short story by Jack London departs from his usual setting in the Yukon and takes place in tropical Hawaii. A young man and older man are fishing and telling tales in "The Water Baby". Read the full text on this site.

Read the full text of "Titee" by Alice Dunbar which is set in New Orleans at the turn of the century.

Enemy Pie by Derek Munson makes readers think seriously about this question: "What if I had to spend an entire day with someone with whom I had a conflict?" This question presents young writers with a great launching pad for developing...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This nonfiction passage provides two stories about slaves in America with question sets. This passage uses primary source documents to teach reading skills including comparing and contrasting.

Read about how "the Populists challenged white supremacy by forming coalitions between black and white farmers who shared a common cause." Part of a larger website called "Jim Crow Stories", this brief article paints the Populist Party...

Explore characterization, plot and setting and compare these elements in mythology and modern works of literature, film and television. Retell myths in modern settings or modern-day stories using a mythological Greek setting. While this...

This is the text of the short story "Boule de Suif" by Guy de Maupassant. The story is set in the Franco-Prussian War and follows a group of French residents of Rouen, recently occupied by the Prussian army. The 10 travelers sharing the...

Students will read three different Cinderella tales, including tales from Africa, China, and America. Upon completion of a Venn diagram comparing the similarities and differences of these tales, the students will complete and present...