Read alouds are great ways to build fluency, accuracy, and intonation. Each slide contains part of a story about a haunted house and audio of the story being read aloud by several different children. Whether you use it as a reading...

As a culminating assignment for a unit study of heroes that uses The Hobbit as the core text, class members engage in a multi-genre writing project.

Scholars read a short story about a girl visiting her grandmother, identify the main idea of the tale, and then write a sentence about this idea. Learners practice their phonics skills by filling in word blanks with letters to complete...

Students explore storytelling by participating in an image analysis activity. In this story structure lesson, students read the book Cookie's Week by Tomie dePaola and retell the story to their teacher in sequential order. Students...

Emergent readers use picture clues to identify the missing word in six fill-in-the-blank sentences. This reinforces the strategy of using the pictures in stories to help define unknown vocabulary. If you have time, consider having...

Students navigate through an online interactive virtual zoo to create imaginary animals by combining different parts of real animals. They write a short story about their combination creature.

Refuse to alienate your scientific-minded young scholars during your creative writing unit. Learners explore how literary writing can reflect observable fact, and be based in actual science. The links include examples of fiction and...

You could spend a full day discussing The Phantom of the Opera and not scratch the surface, but a set of lessons about the literary elements and themes of the musical production is a great start. Young thespians build upon the...

For this narrative tenses and writing short stories worksheet, students complete 6 sentences using the verbs in brackets in the correct narrative tense and then write a short story using the instructions provided.

Students read and analyze the twelve short stories in the novel "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." They create their own detective that has to solve a new kind of crime, and write and edit a short story with their original detective as...

In this beginning short stories worksheet, students read a basic version of a story and then they read an advanced version of the same story. Students then answer 8 questions about the story and its vocabulary.

Mark Twain's frame story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" provides an opportunity for a study of this story-within-a-story pattern. Using an illustrated template, class members record a plot summary of the frame story...

Imagine an entire course devoted to dystopian literature. If that concept appeals to you, check out this course that uses 1984 as the anchor text and includes classic short stories as well.

There's nothing like the thrill of winning the big game! Fourth graders practice reading comprehension skills with a short story and series of questions.

Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...

Take your haikus to the next level with tanka poems, another form of Japanese poetry that regulates the length and rhythm of each line by syllables. Young writers read the explanation, examples, and tips for tanka poems before writing...

Encourage your students to interact with the text as they read. While reading "Three Skeleton Key," class members note predictions, define words and study their meanings, take notes on how the suspense builds, and jot down ideas...

Who am I? Pupils work to answer this question through a unit that explores personal narratives and identity. Exit tickets for activities that examine different poems, short stories, and autobiographical writing serve as prewriting for...

Explore fables with your class. Learners read a series of fables, including The Mouse and the Lion, and then match the moral to the correct story. This is a great way to end a unit on fables. This resource could also be used to explain...

In this rewriting a familiar story worksheet, students choose a familiar story and fill in the squares of a graphic organizer with new information about the characters, setting, story starter, ending. and/or main events. Students write 5...

Pupils discuss the information listed about how to make an outline for a short story or book. They then begin writing their short story and edit it and revise before turning it in to be graded.

Learners explore the elements of a narrative for its purpose, type of audience, mood, main character, minor characters, setting, and conflicts in the story. A story outline is developed and a five paragraph essay composed in this lesson.

The class gets creative after listening to a short story containing a definitive structure. They are required to think about character, relationship, and setting, while attempting to show rather than tell, in their writing. Dialogue,...

Bring the fun and creativity of children's stories to your language arts class. Middle schoolers write, revise, and publish an original student book which incorporates the elements of a short story. They put their story in the form of a...