Caro Clarke
Caro Clarke: Description: What's It For?
This is the twelfth article in a series that is designed to help the new novel writer. This article focuses on how to effectively use descriptions in any writing.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Defining and Exploring an Author's Stylistic Choices
Contains plans for two lessons that teach students how to recognize an author's use of style in literature. These plans use "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston as an example, but the basic ideas can be adapted to other...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Literary Visions
A series of 24 instructional videos, each about 30 minutes in length, designed to teach literary analysis. Topics include Responding to Literature, The Elements of Short Fiction, Tone and Style in Short fiction, The Elements of Poetry,...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Their Eyes Were Watching God: Folk Speech, Figurative Language
In this lesson plan, students will consider Their Eyes Were Watching God: Folk Speech and Figurative Language. Worksheets and other supporting materials can be found under the Resources tab. This activity provides students with an...
Caro Clarke
Caro Clarke: Pacing Anxiety, or How to Stop Padding and Plot!
This is the seventh installment of a series giving advice to the author who is new to writing novels. This article focuses on how to take your characters and use them and their conflicts to develop the plot of your story. W.9-10.3b...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Writer's Model: High School Personal Narrative Example
This two-page essay provides an example of a personal narrative (Click on View Printable Version). Clicking on the "Writer's Guide" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page enables the user to get tips, directions, and...
Caro Clarke
Describing Your Characters Through Their Actions
This is the tenth in a series of articles designed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how to develop characters through their actions instead of simply relying on dialogue and description of thoughts. W.11-12.3d...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Writing Narratives
Notes, a PowerPoint presentation, two videos, a song, an exercise, and a game help students to understand how to write a narrative. Elements of a narrative as well as the use of figurative language and sensory images are introduced and...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Audience and Writing Style
This slideshow tutorial focuses on adjusting writing style to fit the audience. It looks at audience characteristics and discusses how to adapt the vocabulary, sentence style, and tone to fit them. It provides an example using the topic...
Other
Storytelling in the Classroom
There are several steps to becoming a storyteller. Find out what they are and be on your way to becoming a storyteller here! Learn how to find good stories to tell, and how to tell them to an audience effectively.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Analyze Differences in Characters' Moral Dilemmas
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Read works of fiction from various cultures and countries and analyze the differences in the characters' moral dilemmas.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Archetypes, Motifs, and Plot in Drama (English Ii Reading)
Understand and analyze how archetypes and motifs in drama affect the plot of plays.
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Boundless Communications: Using Life Experience (Narrative)
This lesson focuses on using narratives or stories in speeches. It discusses the importance of stories, the power of storytelling, and how and when to use stories in speeches.
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Reading and Interpreting Literary Texts: How to Analyze a Short Story
This lesson focuses on analyzing a short story including all of the elements of a short story such as setting, plot and structure, and characterization.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Mechanical Monsters
In this lesson, students read the description of the mechanical dog from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and then work in groups to create and write descriptions of their own futuristic pet.
Broward Education Foundation
Broward Education Foundation: The Arts and Crafts of Storytelling [Pdf]
In the Arts and Crafts of Storytelling, American folk heroes come to life, help students expand their vocabulary and increase knowledge of figurative language. Students identify figurative language like similes, idioms and hyperboles....
Department of Defense
Do Dea: Real Survival Skills
Learn about process analysis, writing procedurals texts, the steps of the writing process, and cause and effect in this unit. Also, examine patterns of organization in writing. A handy chart shows common organizational patterns which...
Other
Wisewire: Grades 9 10 Playlist: Analyze How an Author Unfolds an Argument
This is an example of how to analyze how an author unfolds an argument. It provides an example and links to use for practice. RI.9-10.3 author unfolds
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Unlocking Symbolism/themes in Drama
Online lesson which uses Hansberry's "Raisin in the Sun" to teach the concepts of symbolism and theme in a dramatic work. Students learn the importance and significance of these terms as they study this work and other works of drama....
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Become a Character
In this online lesson and activity, students actually "become" a character from a novel in their analysis of characterization. The lesson uses the Scarlet Letter, but any novel can be used. RL.9-10.3 Analyzing Characters, RL.11-12.3 Auth...
Other
Writing World: Four Ways to Bring Settings to Life
A great resource outlining four major ways to make settings appear more real and genuine in fiction. Deals with themes such as motion, experience, mood, and the senses. W.11-12.3d Sensory/precise lang narratives
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Development of Characters Through Literary Devices
This lesson focuses on how writers develop characters through a variety of techniques: narration, dialogue, interaction with other characters, interaction with setting, and character's thoughts.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Generate Ideas and Questions
This lesson will focus on the writing you do in high school. Whether you write expository and persuasive essays or short stories, your first steps are to determine and define your audience. After that, you will begin to generate ideas...
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media: Character Development and Relationships in Hamlet
A lesson plan relating to Hamlet whose objective is to able to "analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text". Lesson includes a hook, direct instruction, guided practice, and...