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...

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. 

Read and incorporate a variety of Aesop's Fables into a fable genre study with an eBook produced by the Library of Congress. The interactive eBook contains 146 fables written by Aesop and includes colorful interactive illustrations...

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.

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...

The second lesson in a series of fourteen, this plan takes the short story basics a step further. Learners complete a quiz about the story from the previous day, discuss the text, learn about Anton Chekhov, and work in groups to begin...

A unit covering second-grade skills reviews 16 letter-sound correspondences, tricky words, and punctuation. Readers provide context for examining story elements, and pupils participate in close reading and write narratives retelling a...

"What is the theme of this story?" The very question can spark fear in the minds of readers and incinerate confidence. Here you will discover an exercise that shows how writers use the tools of setting, plot, conflict, and...

Here's an awesome unit that uses The Cay as the anchor text. The 16-page packet is loaded with teaching ideas, activities, and suggested adjustments.

Somebody. Wanted. But. Then. Introduce your classes to the structure that supports stories with a lesson that teaches readers how to identify the four basic components writers use to craft their tales. After identifying these elements in...

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a great story to share with your class, and this lesson focuses on just that story! The eighth in a fourteen-lesson series on short stories, the plan has learners study some vocabulary, read the...

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

Provide extra support with a unit that follows a teach, blend, guided practice, and practice/apply routine to reinforce reading, grammar, vocabulary, and writing skills. Reading and writing lessons include supporting details,...

Shirley Jackson's short story, "Charles," provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to practice their close reading skills. Using the provided list of prompts, scholars read and reread the story, then create a multimodal response to...

Designed for third graders but appropriate for older learners as well, this packet of materials underscores the necessity of teaching kids how to summarize, how to identify main ideas and supporting details, and how to ask questions...

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...

Designed with many of the Common Core standards in mind, this 10-lesson unit is brimming with ELL strategies, teacher's notes, and the best of core instructional methods for teaching the common elements of folktales, and exploring...

"The Masque of the Red Death" provides readers with an opportunity to research and plan a presentation about a topic related to Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story. 

Elevate children's reading comprehension skills with this collection of guided reading resources. From paper dice with basic comprehension questions printed on them to a system for using sticky notes to identify key...

Terror, mystery, excitement. American writers of the 19th century, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, used these elements to create morally ambiguous tales that challenged the prevailing belief in...

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is the anchor text for a lesson plan that teaches young readers how to use the Tip of the Iceberg strategy to go below the surface of a tale. After reading the short story and an article about...

Teach young scholars how to determine the theme of a story, an insight the author wants to share with readers, with a activity that uses Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" as an anchor text. Learners examine the internal and external...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

A 10-lesson unit takes high schoolers through a novel study of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. To start, students learn about Fitzgerald's background and gain historical context that prepares them for a reading of the book. The...