Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...

The eyes have it in a project that combines art with creative writing. Class members list three adjectives or characteristics of a person they admire. Then draw a picture of a pair of eyes that they feel reflects these characteristics....

Involve your readers in finding works of literary genius. Have each individual write down compelling sentences that they read or hear, whether in a newspaper, advertisement, book, movie, song, or any other place! Once each person has a...

Young historians discover the experiences of runaway slaves after reading the brief biography and narrative excerpt of Henry "Box" Brown, who escaped slavery by having himself shipped away in a crate and popularized his...

Stretch scholars' writing muscles with an assortment of narrative writing prompts set to the theme of, You won't believe what happened to me!

Students complete writing activities for fiction. In this fiction writing lesson, students complete four sets of activities in a writer's workshop format to practice reading and writing in a fiction style. Students develop plot outlines,...

Imagine using narrative essays to encourage change. This multi-week unit plan does just that. After reading a series of articles from Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, class members examine the...

Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...

Wait, there is an effective way to practice writing dialogue with your high school class? Great! High schoolers will have a blast writing dialogue using a list of potentially silly situations and an image of people talking. Employ the...

Seventh graders create an original narrative story in a diary or journal format involving a fictional character with conflict, plot, resolution and falling action within the story line. They follow the steps of the writing process with...

What steps did Henry "Box" Brown take while planning his own escape from slavery? Learners work in groups to analyze segments of Brown's narrative and identify the sequence of the most important events of his story.

Follow the format of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles with a journal-writing activity. Readers choose a character and examine the character's life and circumstances through brainstorming, research, and discussion before...

Young writers use the four-square graphic organizer to draft their historical fiction narratives' first, second, third, and fourth paragraphs on the wheelwright. The instructional activity promotes discussion and modeling of what makes a...

Class members discover what it means to publish their works. Working on a computer, young writers use an online dictionary to edit their spellings and conventions based on the information added to the rubric. From here, and most of the...

Analyze a fictional text with a four-page packet that explores a story's main character and moral, challenges scholars to ask and answer questions about the text, and to create a story map. 

Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...

Personal narratives are powerful things. Whether told from the first-person or third-person point of view, whether in the form of an essay, a short story, novel, or video, whether fiction or fact, they capture readers and give them...

Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

The story of King Arthur is a fascinating one, and this retold excerpt offers an excellent example of narrative word choice in a dialogue. Learners read the text and examine the way the author uses synonyms for said. They write down...

If you really want to know, this is a terrific lesson all about narratives, which is just a fancy way of saying telling stories. And you get to do it without being phony or anything. My favorite part is that you get to read a passage...

Students integrate Author and Biography study with Students personal perspective. They make connections between research and creative writing. Students enrich research and critical thinking skills. They encourage students to think about...

Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers.