Curated OER
Pick A Short Story
Students select a short story and apply various literary elements they have used throughout the year. They deconstruct a short story according to plot, setting, characterization, and theme. Students create a PowerPoint.
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 8: Setting and Mood
What mood does this story evoke? How are setting and mood linked? Young novelists explore the different emotions brought about by writing, starting by journaling things that inspire their own feelings. Examine the word mood, looking into...
Curated OER
Story Retelling
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...
Curated OER
Tell Me A Story -- Feelings
Practice using feelings as a way to reflect on past experiences. The poem The End and the text Tell Me a Story Mama are used to identify feeling words. As an extension, pupils participate in a service learning project and reflect upon...
Curriculum Corner
Native American Literature
Celebrate and honor Native American culture with this set of graphic organizers that showcases literature like The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and A Boy Called Slow as well as three other Native American literature books. Learners compare...
Curated OER
Story Pyramids
Young writers generate descriptive words. They use pictures of various landscapes (from books, magazines, or the Internet) and complete a story pyramid. The pyramid (included here) asks to describe the main character, the setting, and...
Curated OER
Setting the Story: Techniques for Creating a Realistic Setting
“It was a dark and stormy night.” Thus begins the 1830's novel Paul Clifford and, of course, all of Snoopy’s novels! Encourage young writers to craft settings for their stories that go beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s often-mocked phrase...
Curated OER
Make Up Your Story
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...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride (Priceman)
What a fun way to explore new vocabulary words! Marjorie Priceman's book Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride offers plenty of new words for scholars to learn in context: amateur, assembled, demonstration,...
Curated OER
STORY GRAMMAR
In this story grammar instructional activity, students are asked to describe the setting, main characters and events from their book in short-answer form.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Character in Place: Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” for the Common Core
How do writers use the interaction between elements like characterization and setting to create meaning? Readers of "A Worn Path" create a series of comic book-style graphics of Eudora Welty's short story and reflect on how Welty uses...
Curated OER
What We Eat, Where We Sleep: Documenting Daily Life to Tell Stories
This is not just a New York Time article to read, this is a set of amazing activity ideas all related to the slide shows "Breaking Bread Everywhere" and "Where Children Sleep." Your class can view each show, read about what they mean...
Curated OER
Finding the Story Setting
Second graders discuss important things to know when reading stories, identify setting in variety of stories, create story map to record information as they are reading, state setting in their own words, discuss whether they thought...
Curated OER
Where Is Your Story Set?
Students explore the concept of setting in literature by identifying their own current setting, and imagining what their ideal setting would be. They read a piece of literature, identify the setting and record the information on a chart.
Curated OER
The Sand Horse
Fourth graders are introduced to the book THE SAND HORSE and discuss the title and cover illustration. They listen to the story listening for words and phrases to describe the setting. They then brainstorm key words to illustrate the...
Curated OER
Story Mapping A Favorite Book
First graders create a diagram of a story by using the computer program Kidspiration. In this diagramming lesson plan, 1st graders will pick a book to write about. They then will plug in story elements of the book into the computer...
California Department of Education
Telling My Story
Crafting a personal statement for college admissions, job applications, or other post-high school programs does not have to be a nightmare. The "Telling My Story" packet describes the key components of successful essays and includes...
Curated OER
What's the Real Story?
Second graders investigate tall tales. In this literature lesson, 2nd graders complete a story element worksheet based upon the tall tale of Paul Bunyan. Students create a PowerPoint presentation about a tall tale.
E Reading Worksheets
Climax, Structure, and Elements of a Story
Appropriate for any short story, this worksheet asks readers to identify key elements and then analyze the structure of a short story.
Curated OER
The Bones of the Story
Young scholars describe the five elements of a story--setting, characters, problem, events, and resolution. They use the Clifford series of books, and a worksheet imbedded in this lesson to help them explain the five elements of a story.
Curated OER
Three Skeleton Key: Elements of Literature
Rats! How are they described in "Three Skeleton Key," and what happens to the characters in the story? Study the vocabulary and the story with these worksheets. Learners complete pre-reading activities, study vocabulary, complete...
Museum of Disability
Ian’s Walk and Apples for Cheyenne
Help young learners understand friendship and empathy with two reading comprehension lessons. Each activity focuses on a story about a child with autism, and encourages readers to compare and contrast the characters to each other and to...
EngageNY
Relationships Between Quantities and Reasoning with Equations and Their Graphs
Graphing all kinds of situations in one and two variables is the focus of this detailed unit of daily lessons, teaching notes, and assessments. Learners start with piece-wise functions and work their way through setting up and solving...
Curated OER
My Antonia: During Reading Strategy
Home in on the quote on this page to explore setting, the author's and character's voices, and plot in Willa Cather's My Antonia. Pupils draw a picture of what is described in the quote, discuss the content, and make connections to their...