Learning to Give
Teaching Playwriting in Schools
The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.
Curated OER
Fairy Tales
Once upon a time are four words most children are familiar with when reading a fairy tale. But do they know that fairy tales are a great way to learn the literary elements of reading and writing? Use a thorough fairy tale unit...
Hood River County School District
Text Structure: Features and Organization
Teach learners how to interact with both fiction and non-fiction text with a packet of activities and worksheets. After looking over text structure and the difference in text features between different types of writing,...
National Endowment for the Arts
Teacher's Guide: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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...
Syracuse City School District
Reading Comprehension Unit Plan
A unit plan uses short texts to teach literary elements such as theme and characterization. Included are passages by authors such as Walter Dean Myers and Sandra Cisneros. Activities include quick writes, filling in graphic organizers,...
Digital Education Resource Archive
Narrative Writing Unit
Each one of the learners in your class has a story to tell, so help them learn the most efficient and organized way to tell their tale. A thorough unit on narrative writing addresses the writing process, grammar, story structure,...
Curated OER
Teaching Language Arts in Kindergarten Using Stories, Aesop's Fables, and Tall Tales
Students search into a variety of story elements in the eight lessons of this unit. The title, author, illustrator, setting, main character, problem, solution, events and the story are the components of the lessons.
Mr. Ambrose
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
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...
Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District
4th Grade Personal Narrative
Throughout 10 lessons, fourth graders learn how to plan, organize, write, and edit their own personal narratives. In the beginning, young writers come up with ideas of personal experiences and the emotions linked with those experiences....
Curated OER
Teachers See the Truth but Wait: Teaching Short Stories with Literature Circles
Students use literature circles to analyze four short stories from the Realms of Gold, Volume 3. In this literature circle lesson, students are assigned a role in the literature circle to improve their critical thinking skills for...
Curated OER
"Et tu, Brute?" - The Characters, Conflict and Historical context of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Students analyze the Shakespearian play, "Julius Caesar" in this seven lesson unit. Through readings, hands-on projects, and the study of plot development, comparisons are made to the movie and the historical records available.
Curated OER
Open Your Eyes Wide-Shut
Students improve their language skills through 11 activities. In this language skills lesson, students listen to picture books, answer questions about elements of a story, enhance their vocabulary and grammar skills, use 5 W questions,...
Curated OER
Tales from Arabia
Students read about Scheherazade and Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp. In this literature/writing lesson, students understand the excitement of foreign places as the setting for a story. Students rewrite their own version of Scheherazade.
Curated OER
Legends of the Fifth
Students explore the the legends and myths of the Orient, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas in this six lessons unit. Different cultures and belief systems of the inhabitants of these areas are examined through storytelling techniques.
Curated OER
GODS OF THUNDER: Myths and Mythical Characters
Students explore the myths and legends of the Ancient Greek and Romans in the ten lessons of this unit. Students compare and contrast the myths and the cultures that created them. Norse myths are included in this unit.
Other
Elements of Fiction
Simple discussion of the elements of fiction with a specific section devoted to Freytag's Pyramid (aka "basic plot structure"). A good place to start for gathering information on the structure of narrative.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Elements of Literature: Guide to Bearstone [Pdf]
This .pdf guide is four pages of chapter by chapter plot, some background info, suggestions for wrapping up the book, and additional reading suggestions.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Literary Visions
Twenty-six half hour videos on literary analysis for high school students that feature authors, scholars, actors and noted critics. Topics include The Art of the Essay, Setting and Character in Short Fiction, Responding to Literature and...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Literary Visions
A series of 24 instructional videos, each about 30 minutes in length, designed to teach literary analysis. Topics include Responding to Literature, The Elements of Short Fiction, Tone and Style in Short fiction, The Elements of Poetry,...