New ReviewA unit explores alternative spellings, ways to include nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions in sentences, and writing personal narratives. Over 25 lessons, first graders participate in whole group and small group instruction....

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a comic strip combines both images and words for the ultimate narrative effect. After reading The Three Little Pigs and deciphering the plot elements, elementary readers work through four...

New ReviewEncultureate, assimilate, or eliminate? The 2021 discovery of a mass grave of over 200 children on the site of a former Canadian Indian Boarding school led to the creation of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. High schoolers...

The eyes have it in a project that combines art with creative writing. Class members list three adjectives or characteristics of a person they admire. Then draw a picture of a pair of eyes that they feel reflects these characteristics....

Frequently banned, often challenged, a mainstay of middle school curriculum, Tales from the Secret Annex, is the featured text in the seventh unit in the Teacher Guide Core Knowledge Program. The 134-page guide includes an introduction,...

Good literature can be much like an iceberg requiring readers to presume that the bulk of the meaning may be inferred to be found below the surface. Here's a lesson plan that asks scholars to conduct a close reading of passages from The...

A male nurse? A female welder? Unequal pay? The "Glass Ceiling?" A 22-page Gender Equity Activity Book asks participants to examine the effects of gender role stereotyping on career choices. Class members also update job titles...

Here's a great way to build community during the first days of the new school year. Participants read personal narratives, then craft and share their stories with others.

A line from Anne Frank's diary reads, "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again." Indeed, that is the hope for scholars who study her diary. The 19-page guide to the Definitive Edition of The Diary of a Young...

Angela Shelf Medearis' Poppa's New Pants provides third graders with an opportunity to stitch together their own narrative filled with sensory details. After reading the story and noting the sensory and concrete details in the tale that...

Just as Kermit the Frog notes, "It isn't easy being green!" it isn't easy occupying "multiple Identity spaces." Class members read and discuss poems by writers detailing what it is like when their identities are "oppressed."

Introduce readers to the great Jay Gatsby with a short video from the American Masters series. Narrators analyze how Fitzgerald's choice of narrator and point of view create the dreamlike qualities and near-mythic status of Jay Gatsby.

Personal narratives are powerful things. Whether told from the first-person or third-person point of view, whether in the form of an essay, a short story, novel, or video, whether fiction or fact, they capture readers and give them...

Jenna and Barbara Bush, daughters of former President George W. Bush, and author Armistead Maupin share with viewers their reasons for selecting John Knowles' A Separate Peace as one of their favorite books.

Working hard to please everyone often pleases no one, according Aesop's fable "The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey." After listening to an audio version of the story, individuals invent their own endings to the passage using a...

Writing is a process, and lesson planning is, too! A personal narrative unit stresses the writing process to pupils, who first examine various stories and poems as a model of autobiographical writing and then write their own stories....

To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine how...

The Walden Woods Project encourages class members to identify and celebrate their own "Walden" that is need of protection. As part of the project, young environmentalists read passages that reveal Thoreau's literary naturalism and his...

An extensive list of narrative prompts is just what you need to inspire young writers to tell their stories. Arranged by topic, the questions are sure give them something to talk about.

Looking for stimulating writing prompts that won't make young writers cringe? A set of five personal narrative writing prompts engages pupils in analyzing, thinking, connecting, and writing about particular topics. Each prompt begins...