Is your city's history a mystery to your class? Ever wonder if your county contains a bounty of folklore? Young computer scientists incorporate technology with time-honored tales during a project with both individual and group...

Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...

Relate the structure of the essay to the structure of a building. The class compares an essay to a building, with the writer being the architect, the introduction being the foundation, and so on. They use the visual representation of a...

Skim, reread, and then take notes. The step-by-step procedure outlined in this resource can be used to help pupils write a summary of a reading passage. Using their notes, class members then draft a summary focusing on the main idea and...

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...

Bring this lesson on hubris to your short story unit. After reading Jack London's "To Build a Fire," young readers discuss the role of hubris in the protagonist's death. The lesson has connections to other short stories, such as "The...

Enhance and extend instruction of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin with one or all of these ideas. You might want to cover characterization and summary, or improve understanding of context clues and irony. You can cover any...

Students explore language arts by completing a graphic organizer in class. In this story structure instructional activity, students read the classic tale "The Three Little Pigs" and discuss the main characters, conflict and setting....

Writing a summary is much easier once you've laid out the sequence of events. Show readers how these two skills are intertwined using this graphic organizer. Review the meaning of sequencing first, presenting the chart and possibly...

After watching and discussing a video on the Voyage of Cabrillo, individuals craft their own origin story and design and build an artifact they feel best represents their history.

Explore a trailblazing way to talk about innovation. Using the Scratch coding program, young computer scientists create innovations and write stories to accompany them. They include some of the add-ons they mastered throughout the unit.

What is the difference between a news story and a personal narrative? This plan has learners write a personal narrative using the topic of service projects in their community. Consider completing a cross-curricular extension by bringing...

Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...

Learners read a story with 220 basic sight words. They discuss why the words are important to identify and utilize them in their own writing assignments.

Compare two versions of "The Three Little Pigs" (traditional and Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, told from the wolf's point of view). As your 4th graders recount the familiar version of the story, emphasize the...

Sometimes it's okay to text in school. Young computer scientists work in the Scratch program to write a text message conversation among friends. They use different sprites within the program to represent each side of the conversation to...

Explore the Ukraine through a reading of The Mitten. Readers will determine the sequence of events, cause and effect, make predictions, and find the main idea of the story. They also use math skills to make charts and graphs. Finally,...

Middle schoolers read a short selection of a story individually or as a class. On their own, they create a story pyramid for the selection and write a one page summary. They use text from the story for their supporting details. To end...

Introduce your class to Inuit prints and use these artworks as inspiration for a printmaking activity. Pupils make stories to go along with the images and then come up with their own heroic moments to illustrate. They take moments from...

Students write a story.  In this writing style and illustration lesson, students review elements of Dr. Seuss' writing and illustration style and read a few more books written by him, examining the writing style.  Students work...

Learners listen to a passage (suggested reading: "Do a Cat's Eyes Glow?") and create a map of what they hear. They use the map to write a summary. Then, they read their own passages and independently map and summarize it the same way....

Students investigate the details of a chosen story of literature. They use a pyramid graphic organizer to record information. The information is used to write a summary of the story. Students use a rubric while writing the summary to...

Pupils explore the narrative structure of a piece of literary text, mapping out the plot structure of the Greek myth "Pyramus and Thisbe." Next, they use their completed graphic organizers to write story summaries.

Fifth graders discuss what narrative writing represents. In this language arts instructional activity, 5th graders review the ten strategies for engaging reader. Students listen to and read good examples of each strategyand write...