Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...

As your class finishes the novel Dragonwings, use these culminating projects. A vocabulary list is given for chapters eleven and twelve and either an epitaph or letter activity concludes the book. The final project consists of creating a...

Everyone loves the tales involving King Arthur and his knights. After reading Knights of the Round Table by Gwen Gross, learners draw inferences and conclusions, analyze story elements, and discuss figurative language, including...

So many themes are expertly woven through Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. On the first page, scholars will read five themes, selecting an incident and a quote to highlight that theme. On page two, they use chapters 29-31 to...

The challenge film makers face when creating a film based on a novel or nonfiction text is the focus of a interdisciplinary resource that uses To Kill a Mockingbird to teach viewers how to read the visual images of film. A...

Watching is not the same as seeing. Transform viewers from passive watchers to active students of film with this 34-page packet, filled with lessons and activities that use Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to examine the technology, the...

Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...

Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...

Teach your class the basics of narrative writing! The resource first describes the Common Core standard for narrative writing in-depth, and then moves into how to apply the standard. Show your class the example essay and quiz them...

Time for a story! Learners of all ages enjoy listening to stories, so read them some common fables and have them work cooperatively to create a fable.  Differentiate for varying ability levels by providing sentence frames, graphic...

There's nothing like the prospect of writing a scary story to get your middle schoolers' writing juices flowing! In the lesson presented here, pupils listen to scary short stories read to them by the teacher. Then, a discussion ensues...

Examine the differences between totalitarianism and democracy in this writing instructional activity. Using the same format and theme from Great Expectations, young writers work in pairs to compose their own short stories. They follow...

What is dialogue? What must it contain? Use this plan to discuss dialogue with your emerging writers. They write a dialogue in script form to dramatize a conversation. Dialogue examples are included. 

Plays are meant to be seen and so are these 12 elements that give plays the dramatic effect. Introduce young actors to these key terms and their explanations

How do modern adaptations of Shakespearean plays relate to their original source material? Middle and high schoolers focus on Shakespeare's play Othello and its screen adaptation "O" to explore how modern film adaptations of Shakespeare...

Students read a variety of electronic Aesop's fables to define fable and moral, and write and illustrate an original fable. They then publish their fable using PowerPoint.

Your class participates in a variety of shared reading and writing activities related to the book Julian Secret Agent. They complete a class story chart, examine how to use punctuation for dialogue, write an alternative...

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

Eighth graders identify figurative language and poetry in this literary analysis lesson. Using Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and a YouTube video for "The Walrus and the Carpenter," young readers complete a literary device...