O. Henry's short story, "The Give of the Magi," launches a study of what motivates people to act as they do. Class members identify what they believe are the motivations of the characters in O. Henry's tale and then craft a one-page...

Students explore a character's motivation in a text.  In this characterization lesson, students view a video about Duke Ellington. Students discuss motivations for Duke Ellington and write sentences explaining Ellington's changes.

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...

Class members may "think themselves accurs'd" when they first hear of an assignment that asks them to create a motivational speech. After studying the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V; however, they will count...

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs provides the lens class members use to analyze and evaluate the motivations of the characters in Sylvia Plath's "Initiation" and scenes from Mean Girls. Readers then select a character from A...

Here is a lesson designed for middle schoolers which helps them recognize stereotypes one way or another against a particular group of people. They also determine what may have motivated the author to use a stereotype in the first place....

Scholars work in pairs to analyze the characters, plot, and setting of Katherine Paterson's novel, Lyddie. Next, they apply what they learned about the characters' feelings and motivation to perform a mini reader's theater. 

Pupils examine similarities and differences between cultures. They'll see that literature, reading, and story telling is something all cultures have in common. They should construct Venn diagrams to help them compare and contrast the...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

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...

Third graders practice the skills of identifying the main message in a story, describing the main character, and sorting the key details of a story into specific categories. The story they read is, The Boy Who Loved Words. Using a...

Have your class explore active reading strategies! In this guided reading activity, learners make personal connections to characters having a bad day as a prior knowledge activation discussion. After reading Gettin' Through Thursday,...

Dive into animation creation using Dreamworks® animated films. Compare and contrast characters, wonder and ponder why the plot is so important, and think of background and themes as your creativity unrolls onto paper.

You can often track a character's development based on others' reactions to their words or actions. Using Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," ninth graders work in a jigsaw activity to analyze how Mirabella's...

Analyze multiple perspectives in short stories. Sixth graders examine the point of view of each major character in three different short stories. After reading the stories, they role-play characters and hypothesize about the character's...

Students analyze Shakespeare's words through scenes and portions of scenes. They compare the characters' motives and make connections between the text they are performing and the larger context of the play. They participate in panel...

Students complete play and vocabulary analysis for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this Macbeth analysis lesson, students use an online research engine to locate passages that highlight Macbeth's response to fear and his descent into...

Students discuss and examine the comic strip section in newspapers.  They compare and contrast themselves and others with the comic strip characters.  With partners, they select a comic strip and complete a student activity sheet.

High schoolers examine the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Cask of Amontillado." In this character lesson, students discuss and analyze the characters in the story. High schoolers make personal connections to the characters and create a...

Get to know more about the characters of the novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis by comparing and contrasting their character traits using a Venn diagram.

Third graders read excepts from the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker in order to gain practice in understanding an unfamiliar story by focusing on the details. They use a worksheet, embedded in the plan, which directs them to certain...

Everyone learns and experiences life differently. A set of lessons about character intensities encourages middle and high schoolers to analyze themselves, their peers, and characters from a book based on the five listed intensities:...

This second lesson in a larger unit is perfect for the beginning of the year because it explicitly teaches 3rd graders how to use close reading skills by identifying unfamiliar words, figuring out the gist, and defining important...

When will we ever use this? A Pixar movie maker explains to students how math is used in the creation of animated films. The movie maker discusses the importance of coordinate planes, transformations and translations, and...