National Humanities Center
Teaching The Great Gatsby: A Common Core Close Reading Seminar
The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Interactives: Elements of a Story
Explore the elements of a story using the well-known Cinderella story as source material. Learn about setting, character, sequence, exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Elements of a Story Interactive
Explore different ingredients, or elements, that go into stories and make them so much fun. Read the story, "Cinderella," and look at all the different pieces of the tale to see how they all fit together.
SMART Technologies
Smart: Identifying the Setting of a Story
In this lesson, students learn to identify the setting of a story by both where and when. A Setting quiz follows.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Literature: Describing Setting
Short explanation of setting as a literary term. Written in the context of "What makes a good short story?" A link at the bottom of the page leads to additional information about setting.
HotChalk
Hot Chalk: Lesson Plans Page: Elements of a Story
This resource provides a lesson plan to teach students about the elements of a story.
Concord Consortium
Concord Consortium: Smartgraphs: Graphs Tell a Story
Students match a word story to the correct set of graphs involving temperature change over time.
Success Link
Success Link: Characters, Setting, Plot, Conclusion, and Summarizing a Story
This lesson plan offers a step-by-step procedure for teaching students how to identify story elements and to summarize a story. It explains how to use a "Who Am I" activity, as well as a linkage activity in identifying characters and...
Google
Google for Education: Writing a Story
In this activity, student storytellers write a story with each group member writing one chapter based on a set of story points. After all the members have come up with their chapters independently, the group collaborates to make the...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Using a Fairy Tale to Teach the Elements of a Story
Students will hear and read different versions of a familiar fairy tale and identify what elements a story must have (character, plot, setting) for the story to be interesting and make sense. Using a Venn diagram, students will then...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Elements of Literature: Analyzing Setting [Pdf]
Use this graphic organizer for analyzing setting and its effect on the meaning of any story.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: The Hound of the Baskervilles 2: The Mysterious Moor
Students examine the importance of setting in this excerpt about the moors, from Masterpiece's 2002 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The legend of the hound that haunts the mysterious landscape of Dartmoor captured Arthur Conan...
Blackdog Media
Classic Reader: From the Memoirs of a Minister of France by Stanley J. Weyman
This is the full text of From the Memoirs of a Minister of France by Stanley J. Weyman. A collection of twelve short stories set in the backdrop of Henry IV's reign. These historical romances chronicle the various thrilling experiences...
Read Works
Read Works: Setting Kindergarten Unit: When (Seasons, Day, or Night)
[Free Registration/Login Required] A lesson plan, based on Look! Snow! by Kathryn O. Galbraith, in which students learn how to utilize text and picture clues to determine basic time elements of setting in a story. Students follow this...
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Part 1 Reading: Literature: Describe a Setting
Do you know how to find the setting of a story? Learn how to find the when and where a story took place on this site.
University of Florida
Baldwin Library: A Set of China Fum Fum and Fee Fee
A scanned copy of the 1880 publication of A Set of China Fum-fum and Fee-fee, a book of stories for children.
Library of Congress
Loc: West Side Story: Birth of a Classic
View the online exhibit featuring photographs, documents--opening night telegraphs, letters, notes by Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein, set designs--and other items such as posters, DVD covers, and a pair of slippers worn in the...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Explain Influence of Setting on Plot Development in Literary Text
This lesson is about the relationship between setting and plot. The setting enhances the story by folding the plot into a place and time that fits perfectly with what is going on; in fact, it is often the setting that makes the action...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Silly Story Builder: Martha Speaks
This activity will help children build vocabulary, become familiar with essential parts of a story, and develop story sequencing skills. They can create silly stories by drawing story parts out of a bag.
Read Works
Read Works: Fourth Grade: Two Lesson Unit: Setting
[Free Registration/Login Required] A two-lesson unit on setting where students use book The Three Brothers: A German Folktale by Carolyn Croll to show how the setting effects the plot of a story, and the book Even More Short and Shivery:...
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Setting
Resource helps with understanding the setting of a story through the use of details.
Read Works
Read Works: Grade 2: Two Lesson Unit: Setting
[Free Registration/Login Required] A set of two lesson plans designed to teach learners to use context clues to identify the setting and changes within it. Lessons are based on the books Bigmama's by Donald Crews and The Stories Julian...
Read Works
Read Works: Setting Kindergarten Unit: Where
[Free Registration/Login Required] Use the book Gaspard at the Seashore by Anne Gutman to teach clues students can use to determine where a story takes place. The book must be provided by the teacher, but downloadable worksheets for...
Read Works
Read Works: Setting 1st Grade Unit
[Free Registration/Login Required] A series of three lesson plans designed to teach students to use pictures and word clues to determine the setting of fiction texts. Lessons are based on the books The Cow Who Wouldn't Come Down by Paul...