Curated OER
A Picture's Worth 500-700 Words: Neoclassical Painting Analysis and Creative Write
Middle schoolers survey Neoclassical art and create a narrative based on their analyses. Focused questions and relevant background information provided by the Getty Museum provides a great foundation for students to understand art...
Curated OER
St. Patrick’s Day
Combine math, creative writing, and leprechauns in a fun St. Patrick's Day activity! Using a bag of gold coins and marshmallows, kids write a math story about a leprechaun that includes a multi-step equation to solve.
Curated OER
Creative Writing Lesson Plan
Students practice recognizing the elements needed to produce a piece of creative writing and become aware of those elements in their own original pieces of writings. In groups, they creatively write a new story utilizing all the major...
Curated OER
Make Up Your Story
Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...
Curated OER
Creative Outline for Your Short Story or Book
Middle schoolers discuss the information listed about how to make an outline for a short story or book. They then begin writing their short story and edit it and revise before turning it in to be graded.
Curated OER
Short Story Framework
The class gets creative after listening to a short story containing a definitive structure. They are required to think about character, relationship, and setting, while attempting to show rather than tell, in their writing. Dialogue,...
Curated OER
Original Children's Books
Bring the fun and creativity of children's stories to your language arts class. Middle schoolers write, revise, and publish an original student book which incorporates the elements of a short story. They put their story in the form of a...
Curated OER
Research, Writing, and the 'Isms'
High schoolers research an art style. They create an original short story, poem, or personal essay and illustrate the written work with the style of art they researched.
Curated OER
Writing Mythological Narratives
Young scholars compose a creative writing piece based on a painting of a mythological scene. In this creative writing lesson plan, students write about the scene in the painting and tie in their original stories into tales from the...
Curated OER
Art Analysis and Creative Writing
Learners write an acrostic poem and analyze a work of art. In this art lesson plan, students look at a picture and answer questions about it, write a poem, write about the setting in the painting they saw, and answer short questions...
Curated OER
Children's Book
A great way to publish students' stories is by having them create a picture book using Pages. This simple lesson plan has them take a short story they have written and create a book with a title page and dedication. After they have...
Curated OER
Scene Writing: Literacy and Playwriting
Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The activities...
Curated OER
Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" in Graphical Representation
Students analyze graphical forms of Eudora Welty and interpret the shorts stories in the representations. For this graphical representations lesson, students analyze the short story genre in comic strips. Students then create their own...
Curated OER
A Picture's Worth 500-700 Words
Students interpret and analyze a work of art and write a narrative for the piece of art. In this narrative art lesson, students analyze a work of art and then write a short story 500-700 words long to narrate the art.
Curated OER
Leaf People
Kids create leaf people out of sticks, glue, and leaves. They use their imagination to construct leaf people and then glue them onto construction paper. Tip: Extend this craft by incorporating writing. Have learners write a short story...
Curated OER
Fill a Jar
Sometimes short lesson outlines are enough to give you a great idea. Young writers draw any object inside an image of a jar, that doesn't belong in a jar. They can draw a tree, truck, or dinosaur. Tip: Have kids write a short story...
Music Publishers Association of the United States
I Made It. I Own It. Please Don't Steal It.
Explore the world of copyright law with a variety of activities to instill the importance of respecting creative property. Scholars watch an animated tale then take part in a grand conversation detailing the video's main idea, details,...
Roald Dahl
The Twits - Muggle-Wump Has an Idea
If a bar of chocolate was on the floor, would you try to pick it up? What if it was covered with glue? The eighth lesson in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl has scholars imagine crazy scenarios. The lesson...
Curated OER
Pride and Prejudice: Unsent Letter
What would the characters of Pride and Prejudice say to each other in a letter? Draft unsent correspondence between characters from Jane Austen's novel. A great way to explore characterization and plot structure in a creative lesson plan.
Curated OER
Tell Me a Story
Tenth graders read short story, "The Storyteller" by Saki, and expand on concept of stories for students by reading and evaluating several popular students's stories as well as writing their own original students's stories.
Curated OER
Create a Pet/Monster Creative Writing Activity
Students are instructed to create a monster in a paragraph or even a short story. This activity allows students to work with new vocabulary. It is also a good way to practice using verbs and adjectives in Spanish.
Curated OER
Comic and Film Strip Writing
Students write a funny story and illustrate it in a comic strip. For this comic strip lesson, students study comic strips and determine the plot of each story. Students then write a short story and illustrate it using a comic strip...
Curated OER
Justice for All
A reading of Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter opens a discussion of justice and fairness. Using a Venn diagram and an Idea Wheel graphic organizer, class members consider the similarities and differences in these two terms. They then...
Minnesota Literacy Council
Grapes of Wrath and Pronouns
Many regard John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as the great American novel. The lesson plan combines a variety of strategies, including partner work, independent practice, creative writing, grammar instruction, and small group...