MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Magical Musical Tour: Using Lyrics to Teach Literary Elements
Language arts learners don't need a lecture about poetry; they listen to poetry every day on the radio! Apply skills from literary analysis to famous songs and beautiful lyrics with a lesson plan about literary devices. As class...
Curated OER
Poetic Elements Are Fun!
Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...
All-in-One High School
Elements of Plot
Cinderella wants to go to the ball and marry the prince. At the end of the story, she does! But how does the plot move from the exposition to the resolution? Teach language arts learners and fairy tale fans about the basics of plot...
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Elements of Music—How do Composers Plan?
The introduction to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and the finale of his Symphony No. 4 provide young musicians with an opportunity to investigate the music elements composers employ to develop the themes they want to create. They compare the...
Curated OER
A Glimmer of Beauty: Lesson Plan
Fully analyze the elements of art and unexpected beauty in the William Merritt Chase's Still Life with a Fish. The class will examine the painting very closely, then use photography to express unexpected beauty in still life. This is a...
Curated OER
Magical Musical Tour: Using Music Lyrics to Teach Literary Elements
While music lyrics are often used to teach literary elements, the richness of this resource comes from the wealth of exercises, activities, and support materials provided in the packet. Although designed for gifted learners, the...
Syracuse City School District
Literary Elements
Address the literary elements in a piece of writing using these materials. The packet includes plenty of resources, and focuses mainly on theme, character, and point of view, with some materials for setting, symbolism, and author's...
Learning to Give
Teaching Playwriting in Schools
The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.
British Council
Learning English through Short Stories
Use short stories to teach English? Yes! Designed as a professional development opportunity for English language teachers, the ideas in this booklet can easily be adapted to advanced ESL/ELL classes.
Hood River County School District
Text Structure: Features and Organization
Teach learners how to interact with both fiction and non-fiction text with a packet of activities and worksheets. After looking over text structure and the difference in text features between different types of writing, readers analyze...
Digital Public Library of America
Teaching Guide: Exploring To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, considered by many to be a seminal piece of American literature, contains many complex literary themes that carry through United States history. Use a series of discussion questions and classroom...
National Gallery of Canada
To Canada with Love
Focus on line and color with a postcard project. Learners view various works of art and discuss line and color before moving on to creating their own work. Using nature as inspiration, pupils decorate postcards and mail them after...
Curated OER
Elements of a Short Story (SMARTboard)
TV for homework? Your pupils' dreams have come true! After reading Sandra Cisneros's "Eleven," they analyze the elements of the story, particularly the plot and and climax. The lesson could work with any short story that you are using to...
Scholastic
Tell Us a Tale: Teaching Students to Be Storytellers
Encourage scholars to retell their favorite short story or folktale, adding personal details to make it their own. After reading their book of choice several times, story tellers retell a tale verbally to their classmates.
Scholastic
Defining Conflict Using "The Interlopers"
Feeling conflicted? Work out those issues with a language arts lesson on internal and external conflict. Using "The Interlopers" by Saki, class members identify the conflicts between the characters before writing their own short stories...
Thoughtful Education Press
Personal Narratives: Learning from Lessons Life Teaches Us
"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...
Louisiana Department of Education
Essential Elements Cards
Use essential elements cards to help lesson plan! Each card contains an informational text common core standard for grade levels six through eight and suggestions for activities and supports. Cards address skills such as citing textual...
Curated OER
Animal Self-portrait Mosaics: A Visual Arts Elective
Out-lined here is a two-week procedure that has the class creating ceramic animal tiles that are metaphorical representations of their own personalities. They discuss animal images found throughout history, what they mean, metaphor, and...
Curated OER
Differentiated Language Arts
Pupils read speeches and identify the main idea as well as the literary techniques employed, paying careful attention to the persuasion and repetition elements that each speech possesses. Using a graphic organizer, they analyze,...
Writing Educators Symposium
Asking the Right Questions
It can be difficult to find the theme of a book or story if you don't know the questions to ask. Teach your kids to discern the universal theme in works of literature with a set of activities that promote critical thinking and active...
Curated OER
Making a Chiminea
A chiminea is an outdoor fireplace usually made from terracotta. Your class will make miniature versions of this useful heating device to practice specific sculpting techniques. This instructional activity spans four days. It includes...
Geography 360°
Poetry Writing
Put the tips and tricks in this guide into practice in order to encourage your pupils to blossom into poets. A wonderful reference material for teachers, this packet includes definitions of poetic terms and forms as well as step-by-step...
Teaching Tolerance
Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice | Confronting Unjust Laws
The right to peacefully assembly to protest injustice is a key element of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Class members are asked to analyze two photographs of people confronting what they consider to be unjust...
Lafayette Parrish School System
Teaching Tone and Mood
Tone and Mood are not synonymous! Introduce young readers to these literary devices with a series of exercises that not only point out the significant differences between the terms but also shows them how to identify both the tone and...