Classical Academies
Story Openings
How should you begin a story? Show this presentation to give your class a few ideas. Each slide includes information about story openings and examples of certain types of story openings written by well-known authors. After showing the...
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...
Channel Islands Film
Telling Your Own Story
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.
Indian Land Tenure Foundation
Tribal Origin Stories
The teacher reads and retells Californian tribal origin or creation stories that come from the traditions of a variety of California Indian tribes. Then, pupils get together in groups and retell the stories they just heard; just as the...
Biology Junction
Origin of Life
Aristotle explained the idea of spontaneous generation, a concept which lasted almost 2,000 years before scientists proved it wrong. Scholars learn about the history of our understanding of the origins of life. They read examples of...
Novelinks
Walk Two Moons: Story Impressions
Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to determine...
Curated OER
Create - A - Story
Apply the elements of a story to create an original story. They select a character, setting, and plot out of a bag, and write an original story tying the three story elements together.
Curated OER
Inspiring Imagination for Story Content
Here is a very interesting story writing presentation. Young writers are prompted to write by responding to a variety of questions. Once their imaginations have been piqued, they are told to write the first three lines of an original...
Curated OER
Sound/Story
High schoolers combine creativity with the rigor of careful editing by adding music to their story. It forces them to focus on how they communicate the meaning of their story to the listener.
Curated OER
Mythological Word Origins
No wonder the ship was called the Titanic. An investigation of Norse, Roman, and Greek Mythology provides insight into mythological characters and corresponding words in the English language. A close look at roots, prefixes, and suffixes...
Curated OER
Short Story Commercials
Learners read short story selections, and work with classmates to produce commercials using digital video equipment.
Curated OER
Making a Magical Story
Fourth and fifth graders use their knowledge of developing character, dialogue, and setting to produce an original story. An excerpt from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is used as inspiration to get everyone's creative juices...
Curated OER
The Learning Network: Re-envisioning Classic Stories
Readers reflect on enjoyable stories they know, brainstorm criteria that make a story "good," analyze a New York Times article about innovative children's performances, re-envision classics on their own, and peer edit drafts. Use this as...
Curated OER
Creative Writing Story Boards
Young scholars design their own memorable three-D book with rubbings for illustrations. They draft and edit an original story and then choose which characters or scenes they want to illustrate. Each student also shares their art and...
Shutterfly
Photo Story Lesson Plan
After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...
Curated OER
Create a Book with Student Treasures
You can't publish a story until after it has been revised and edited! Budding authors investigate the writing process while drafting an original story. They select a topic, complete a rough draft, edit it, revise it, and finally publish...
Curated OER
Story Starters
Sixth graders examine the pictures on a chart and relate to their own experiences. In this story starters writing lesson plan, 6th graders explore the pictures presented by the teacher and then create an original story based on the...
Curated OER
Write a Story
Elementary writers will create short stories with their classmates' help, publishing the books using computer programs. The first learner writes a sentence to start the story, and each classmate adds a sentence to the story. The original...
Curated OER
Around the Room Short Story
Collective story writing is a great way to reinforce the concept of story elements and collaborative learning. Young writers discuss story elements such as, setting, character, action, climax, conclusion, foreshadowing, dialogue, and...
Curated OER
Scrambled Stories
Character development, setting, and plot? Sounds like the makings of a good narrative story. Young authors read and analyze several narrative examples, and then they use what they know to pen an original composition. They work both in...
Illustrative Mathematics
Grandfather Tang's Story
It's amazing the complex figures that can be made using only a few simple shapes. Following a class reading of the children's book Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert, young mathematicians use sets of tangrams to create models of the...
Curated OER
Space Travel Stories
Students engage in the writing of a story about space. They brainstorm in small groups to create ideas for original stories. Students use their imaginations to depict a scene that is part of the story. They could also use the...
Curated OER
Story With Words on Top
Students create a scene for an original story in this lesson. They think of a favorite place or event from memory or their imagination. They draw the scene that will be the setting of their story. Finally, they write the story around the...
Curated OER
Same Old Story
Learners relate their favorite childhood stories to their lives today. Through personal interviews, students discover the connections between their favorite stories and their own choices and characters, as well as connections to the...