Curated OER
Writing Short Stories: The Fun Way
Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...
Curated OER
Sense, Sensibility and Sentences: Examining and Writing Memorable Lines
Involve your readers in finding works of literary genius. Have each individual write down compelling sentences that they read or hear, whether in a newspaper, advertisement, book, movie, song, or any other place! Once each person has a...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing for Publication
Seventh graders create an original narrative story in a diary or journal format involving a fictional character with conflict, plot, resolution and falling action within the story line. They follow the steps of the writing process with...
ReadWriteThink
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
A picture's worth a thousand words—and even more inspiration! A visual activity uses photographs to inspire writers. The process teaches aspects of narrative writing, such as point of view and characterization.
Student Achievement Partners
"The Glorious Whitewasher" from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain with Mini-Assessment
It's the classic scene: Tom Sawyer is whitewashing a fence. Expose your learners to Mark Twain's humor while reinforcing reading comprehension. Eighth graders are encouraged to read and reread, achieving as much exposure to the text as...
Crafting Freedom
Sequencing of Events in the Slave Narrative of Henry "Box" Brown
What steps did Henry "Box" Brown take while planning his own escape from slavery? Learners work in groups to analyze segments of Brown's narrative and identify the sequence of the most important events of his story.
Curated OER
Reliving History through Slave Narratives
Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...
EngageNY
Mid-Unit Assessment and Establishing a Context for My Hero’s Journey Narrative
How do writers engage their readers in a story? Pupils consider the question and use the informational text, "The Hero's Journey" to justify their plan for their own fictional narrative. To that end, scholars write an explanatory...
Carnegie Library
Creative Writing: Middle School Lesson Plan
Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers.
Crafting Freedom
Creating Original Historical Fiction Using Henry "Box" Brown's Narrative and Runaway Slave Ads
Young historians discover the experiences of runaway slaves after reading the brief biography and narrative excerpt of Henry "Box" Brown, who escaped slavery by having himself shipped away in a crate and popularized his flight in a...
K20 LEARN
Windows To The Soul: A Creative Writing Project
The eyes have it in a project that combines art with creative writing. Class members list three adjectives or characteristics of a person they admire. Then draw a picture of a pair of eyes that they feel reflects these characteristics....
Curated OER
What Makes a Novel a Novel?
They always say to write what you know. This approach is used to get middle schoolers prepared to write novels of their own. Using a favorite book as a model, potential novelists respond to prompts that ask about characters, plot, main...
Scholastic
Thomas Jefferson and Monticello: An Introduction to Writing Historical Fiction
Thomas Jefferson is one of the most recognized names and faces in America—but is there more to the third president of the United States? Upper elementary and middle schoolers conduct research on Jefferson, his famous home at Monticello,...
Curated OER
Daughters Come of Age in Women's Fiction
Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...
EngageNY
Writing the Children’s Book: Day Two
Following a brief mini-lesson on using dialogue in fiction, young writers continue day two of their writing workshop. They work on the second half of their Children's Book Storyboards, and then they turn and talk with partners to reflect...
EngageNY
“The Hero’s Journey”: Analyzing a Model Narrative and Continuing to Plan a New Hero’s Journey Narrative
Many elements go into an engaging narrative story. Using a helpful resource, scholars analyze a model narrative and deconstruct it using a graphic organizer. Next, they apply their learning from the model to update their plans for their...
EngageNY
“The Hero’s Journey”: Using a Graphic Organizer to Deconstruct Percy Jackson’s Hero’s Journey and Plan a New Hero’s Journey Narrative
Time to go on a journey! Using a graphic organizer, scholars deconstruct Percy Jackson's hero's journey from the Rick Riordan novel, The Lightning Thief. Next, they begin planning their own hero's journey narrative, creating a profile of...
Channel Islands Film
Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island: Lesson Plan 2
After watching West of the West's documentary The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, class members imagine how Juana Maria/Karana may have felt about living alone on the island for 18 years and craft a blackout poem or a narrative in her...
Curated OER
Memoir
After reading and analyzing two narrative memoirs, middle schoolers engage in a variety of activities, including writing an essay, developing a story map, and creating character charts. They then compare and contrast story maps, and...
EngageNY
Preparing for the Mid-Unit Assessment: Planning the Children’s Book
Pupils complete a My Children's Book Plan worksheet to carefully prepare for a narrative writing project. Scholars also continue working in their groups from lesson plan two, using their scavenger hunt worksheets to discuss what makes a...
Curated OER
Detective Fiction: Focus On Critical Thinking
Turn your 6th graders into detectives while growing their love of reading. Using critical thinking skills, they will be able to describe the five basic elements of detective fiction, read detective novels, make predictions, use the...
Teachers.net
How to Write a Movie Review from a Pet's Perspective
When would two paws up denote a blockbuster film in your classroom? Only when young writers create movie reviews from a pet's perspective in this imaginative expository writing practice. This engaging topic begins with a class discussion...
NASA
Science Fiction Story
A instructional activity allows you to go back in time and see the big bang actually happen. Bazinga! In reality, pupils research the Big Bang Theory and theorize what it would be like to go back in time and see it happen. There are four...
Curated OER
E.T., Are You Out There?
Research the necessary components of a planet that supports life after reading the article "All of a Sudden, The Neighborhood Looks a Lot Friendlier" from The New York Times. After finding their information, middle and high schoolers...