While many can identify Ernest Hemingway's famous works, they may be unaware of his service during World War I and how that affected his literary contributions. An video details Hemingway's service in World War I and explains events and...

A short story is only as strong as its characters, development, and conflicts. Encourage the young authors in your class to plan their stories based on the elements of narrative writing, all provided in brainstorming graphic organizers.

Ideal for a language arts class, literary unit, or independent reading assignment, a set of reading worksheets address a wide array of skills. From poetic elements to nonfiction text features, you can surely find a valuable resource in...

Get a different response each day of the week with five unique reading log pages. Learners will engage fully in their free reading by filling out a nightly entry on these worksheets. The log requires learners to comment on everything...

As your writers prepare to do their own writing (perhaps a novel, as this worksheet suggests), they can benefit from drawing inspiration from authors and literary works they admire. Learners examine a novel they enjoyed and respond to...

Discover the genre of short stories with sixth graders. They discuss the characteristics of short stories from the book America Street. Then, they compare and contrast movies and television shows and chart story characteristics. Various...

Jazz, Blue Grass, Hip Hop, Swing. Gospel, R&B, Ragtime, Disco. So many music genres born in the USA. After reading an article about the fate of New Orlean's Jazz after Hurricane Katrina, class members investigate the life cycles of...

Song lyrics, like poems, are meant to be heard. After examining the literary devices in several poems, scholars examine the lyrics of popular songs and identify the sound devices and the figurative language writers use to create the...

Metaphors are word pictures, creating images in our brains that draw readers to consider how two seemingly unrelated items are alike. Poems by Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Shihad Nye provide learners with an opportunity to...

Six lessons make up a unit all about biographies. Scholars read about a remarkable life while taking notes and identifying characteristics of the biographical genre. Readers examine the tale's obstacles, accomplishments, and sequence of...

Young writers get an opportunity to create their own characters, world, and fantasy as part of a study of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. After reviewing the tropes of the genre, they let their imaginations carry them away to a land of...

There is power in words. Readers take a close look at three text to determine how language structures affect meaning, including include poems and recipes. Scholars analyze the language authors use by circling important words, underlining...

Benjamin Franklin may be known as a Founding Father, but he was also a prolific writer. Scholars examine his better-known pieces to learn about genre, voice, and early American history. The resource includes options for various...

Enthusiastic readers take part in a book club unit that focuses on genre, particularly historical fiction, fantasy, and adventure. Over the course of 10 days, groups read a variety of stories and choose leveled activities from a learning...

Accompany a viewing of Disney's live-action feature film, The Jungle Book, with a packet equipped with several activities focused on story elements. Scholars discuss and complete diagrams and charts about the movie's characters, setting,...

A reading comprehension worksheet traces the history of musical theatre. It starts with ancient Greece choruses and continues through the ballad and comic operas of the Renaissance, the operettas of Britain, France, and Germany, the...

If you're tired of defining allusion, onomatopoeia, and satire for your language arts students, hand out a complete list of literary devices to keep the terms straight. Each term includes a definition that is easy to understand and...

History inspires fantasy. That idea forms the basis of an informational video about the genre. Through the video, viewers learn about different subgenres of fantasy and discover its key characteristics. The video discusses many popular...

Heroes with six-pack abs, helpless heroines, cliche plot lines —must be a romance novel! An informational video describes the romance novel genre and explains how it differs from a traditional love story. It uses popular texts as...

How is it that science fiction writers have displayed the uncanny ability to predict the future? An informational video discusses the genre of science fiction and explains how it has developed. Discussions of specific texts, such...

Barbie has been an iconic figure in the lives of girls since the 1950s, but her existence has been full of controversy. A lesson plan on style, format, and genre explores that controversy by looking at three texts with different...