Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway:writing an Engaging Story With Literary Strategies to Enhance Plot
A learning module that teaches students about writing a short story with a strong plot in seven mini-lessons: Introduction, Choose the Point of View, Figure Out What to Say, Suspend Readers in Midair, Write about a Central Theme, Read A...
Daily Teaching Tools
Daily Teaching Tools: Free Graphic Organizers for Planning and Writing
This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides 30+ graphic organizers to aid in planning and writing. Students will be able to write informational pieces and literary responses.
Daily Teaching Tools
Daily Teaching Tools: Free Graphic Organizers for Planning and Writing
This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides graphic organizers that students can use to plan their written pieces. Graphic organizers for all modes of writing are provided.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Using Fairy Tales to Teach the Short Stories
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.
British Library
British Library: 20th Century: Angela Carter's the Bloody Chamber
These activities offer students a unique opportunity to examine how a writer crafts a narrative. By exploring many of Angela Carter's early drafts, students will uncover how she created her ground-breaking short story collection, "The...
Daily Teaching Tools
Daily Teaching Tools: Story Maps
This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides six story-map graphic organizers.
TES Global
Tes: Schemes of Work: Prose. Ghost Stories
[Free Registration/Login Required] This series of 13 lessons explores the horror/ghost film genre. Students will culminate the study by writing their own ghost stories.
British Library
British Library: Shelley's Frankenstein: The Ghost Story Challenge
Students will explore the origins of Frankenstein and place the novel in its context, considering it alongside the contemporary horror stories and scientific developments that influenced Mary Shelley. They will present their knowledge in...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Tie It Up With Transition Words to Write a Story!
Read, write, and present a digital narrative with transition words to help us put the events in order! After modeling the lesson, groups of learners will write narratives to recount a short sequence of events, they will include details...
Varsity Tutors
Varsity Tutors: Web English Teacher: Tim O'brien Lesson Plans
For teaching the work of Tim O'Brien, this site features lesson plans, overviews, notes, and other resources to help students reading The Things They Carried, Ambush, Going After Cacciato, If I Die in a Combat Zone, and so on.
Other
Paul Yee: 'Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories' Teaching Guide [Pdf]
This teaching guide provided by Paul Yee for his book of short stories, "Tales from Gold Mountain", provides a summary of the book, discussion questions and classroom activities. The book explores the experiences of Chinese immigrants to...
Other
Paul Yee: 'What Happened This Summer' Teaching Guide [Pdf]
This teaching guide provided by Paul Yee for his book of short stories, "What Happened This Summer", provides a summary of the book, discussion questions and classroom activities. The book explores the issues faced by Chinese-Canadian...
University of South Florida
Educational Technology Clearinghouse: Lit2 Go
Find stories, novels, and poems from more than one hundred authors. Download select works as MP3 files or read or listen to them online. Available selections span a wide range of literature, from nursery rhymes to the philosophy of...
Daily Teaching Tools
Daily Teaching Tools: 10 Graphic Organizers for Download
These graphic organizers will engage students in planning strategies for writing assignments. Students will participate in planning stories and critiques via story maps and critique planning sheets.
Read Works
Read Works: Drawing Conclusions Kindergarten Unit: Short Story
[Free Registration/Login Required] A lesson plan teaching students to make conclusions based on a sentences and short texts. Students use textual cues to explain how the conclusions were reached. Ideas for direct teaching, guided...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: When I Was Young In, a Literature to Language Experience
Past meets present in this lesson in which young scholars practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.
Other
Biography Base: Aesop Biography
This is a biography of Aesop, the supposed author of Aesop's Fables, a collection of folktales that use talking animals to teach morals or lessons about life. It also provides of some of his fables.
PBS
Pbs: "Cora Unashamed" in the Classroom
Langston Hughes' short story "Cora Unashamed" was made into a Masterpiece Theatre production. This brief teacher guide offers ideas about using it in the classroom. The site also includes background on the time period, the Harlem...
Scholastic
Scholastic: Real World Conflict Resolution
A unit plan that uses short stories, graphic organizers, and journal writing to get middle schoolers to think about conflict resolution. Uses "Abd al-Rahmen Ibrahima" by Walter Dean Myers, Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird...
ClassFlow
Class Flow: Plot and the Most Dangerous Game
[Free Registration/Login Required] This flipchart teaches students about plot and gives examples from short story and also highlights vocabulary.
Varsity Tutors
Varsity Tutors: Web English Teacher: O. Henry
Have you ever heard of O.Henry and his Texas tales? Use this informative resource featuring links to lesson plans, teaching ideas, biographical information and more.
Read Works
Read Works: Casey Saves the Play
[Free Registration/Login Required] This short literary text passage shares the story of a character who is able to particiapate . This passage is intended for guided practice and is designed to reinforce essential reading comprehension...
CommonLit
Common Lit: Yeshi's Luck by Naomi C. Rose
CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words to see the...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: The Pros and Cons of Discussion
Contains plans for four lessons that use "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. to engage students in a discussion about what constitutes equality. Lessons use re-writes, persuasive essays, computer activities, and informal class...