Watch video clips that illustrate a character's development. Your class can watch video's about a character and her development through a life decision. They then complete a timeline activity for the story.

Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy lesson focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then discusses how...

Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...

Review story elements with your class. They will use examples from a story to develop critical-thinking questions. Then they use a graphic organizer to describe the setting, character, and plot of the story, focusing on how they...

Sixth graders read Katherine Paterson's novel, Bridge to Terabithia, and watch a video of Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are. They examine the characters in both stories that share similar characteristics. Students use the...

Pages and pages of engaging activities, worksheets, and writing projects on teaching folktales and fables await you! You don't want to miss this incredible resource that not only includes a wide range of topics and graphic...

Few aspects of life make better fodder for a comedic play than politics. A study guide introduces George Bernard's Shaw comedy Arms and the Man. Along with summaries of each scene and brief biographies of the main characters, two lesson...

The simple instructional techniques described in this plan will help young readers learn and practice basic reading skills and strategies. Before reading, introduce your readers to the meaning of main character, setting, and plot. Then...

Students read a variety of Cinderella tales from different cultures. They discuss the differences in character, plot, and conflict resolution in the stories from different countries.

Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record...

Young scholars explore the connection between analyzing a character and the character plot conflict. In this plot conflict lesson students role play two characters in the story, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Young scholars also...

Work on narrative writing with this lesson, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...

Create a picture dictionary for one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays. After readers finish The Tempest, they assign each letter of the alphabet to a concept or character, and add a description and evidence from...

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

Learners consider different story settings and how they add to character and plot development. They choose settings to recreate in three dimensions using stencil, printing, and stamping techniques with paint.

Character development, setting, and plot? Sounds like the makings of a good narrative story. Young authors read and analyze several narrative examples, and then they use what they know to pen an original composition. They work both in...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...

Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research, art, and...

Alliterative adjective nicknames generate stories inspired by Rosemary Wells' book Noisy Nora (also a thematic complement to any class with children who make a ruckus to get attention). Class members explore basic story elements --...

Students explain how individual elements (e.g., plot, theme, character, conflict, etc.) comprise the structure of a play. They write an original one-act play with developed characters, specific setting, conflict, and resolution.

Connect to real-world experiences by having your primary learners create an award certificate based upon literal and inferential information from a story. They present the award to a character from a story and explain the criteria used....

Young readers bring characters to life by working in small groups to script and perform stories that contain a community concept. Detailed questions and activities are outlined for the class. Consider having your groups create...

Through reading and writing, learners explore common elements found in fairy tales. After discussing traditional fairy tales, class members listen to The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by John Scieszka, a hilarious retelling of the...