The Kennedy Center
Fairy Tale Variations
Here are two great lessons that work together and are inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Young writers and actors will retell the story of "The Frog Prince" through games, improvisational script writing, and...
EngageNY
Writing the First Draft of the Readers Theater Script
Scholars analyze a model Readers Theater script. Then, small groups read their scripts aloud to help determine where they need to make revisions.
Curated OER
Scriptwriting Skill Module: Dialogue
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.
Scholastic
Tell Us a Tale: Teaching Students to Be Storytellers
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.
Curated OER
Theater: Create a Script
Figurative language is the focus in the book Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia. After reading Peggy Parish's book, class members dramatize idioms from the text, using dramatic strategies such as characterization, exaggeration, and...
Curated OER
Screen Play
High schoolers examine the New York Times review of the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and explore the elements of scriptwriting. They read the article about the film adaptation screenplay and examine a...
Curated OER
Write Your Own Screen Play
Students critique the transition of "Holes" from a novel to screenplay and consider how the details in a book are brought to life in a movie. They then choose a scene in a book and transform it into an original script after brainstorming...
Curated OER
Write a Harry Potter Script
Examine the technique of writing a script and complete a worksheet in which young writers summarize a favorite chapter in a Harry Potter book. They practice public speaking by acting out the summarization scenes for classmates. Handouts...
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...
Curated OER
Planning and Drafting a Personal Narrative
Bring your learners together to write a class narrative about the first day of school. Start off by teaching them about sequence with a quick oral activity. Then, work together to fill out a story map. Finally, compose the class...
Curated OER
Writing an Original Fable
Students discover how to write fables. In this writing skill lesson, students review the literary elements of fables and take all of the steps in the writing process to create their own fables.
EngageNY
Launching Readers Theater Groups: Identifying Passages from Esperanza Rising for Readers Theater that Connect to the UDHR
Teach young readers how to compare two texts and select passages that exemplify a specific theme with Lesson 6 from Unit 3. Begin by modeling how an expert reader selects examples from a text, performing a think aloud on how Article 2 of...
Curated OER
The Tom Cruise Wedding
Scholars read a newspaper article about Tom Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006. They define vocabulary words, complete comprehension worksheets, and analyze use of the present perfect and passive in the article. Individuals write...
Curated OER
Scriptwriting Skill Module
Students identify and analyze conflicts in plots. For this conflict lesson students recall stories, novels and movies they've read or seen and discuss the conflicts contained therein. They then complete some written exercises to...
One Stop English
A Lesson on Register
The classroom might not be the best place for informal language, but it's a great place to teach middle and high schoolers how to identify the correct language register for their audience. A short lesson on formal and informal language...
Curated OER
Day four: Writing a Sports Article
Young scholars write a newspaper article related to a sports event. In this article writing lesson, students read sports-related articles, complete a graphic organizer to help them see the format of a newspaper article, then they...
Curated OER
Story Writing
Students work in groups to create a story that will be presented to the class. In this story writing lesson, students complete a project planning sheet, work together to create a story that includes a hero and at least two other...
Curated OER
Writing A Story
Students write a story about past events and translate it into English. In this story writing lesson plan, students watch video clips, look at examples of stories, and write ones themselves.
Curated OER
Make a Social Skills Superhero Comic Book
Get creative as you teach a lesson on positive peer and social interactions. Discuss good social interactions through a scenario, brainstorm a positive response to the scenario, then creat a comic book superhero that exemplifies the...
Curated OER
Conversations about childhood
Encourage your class to discuss their childhood with other classmates using the six questions listed here. After sharing their answers, learners write a paragraph detailing general information about their childhood. This plan is designed...
Curated OER
Writing - Direct Speech
The art of writing dialogue is the focus of this language arts resource. After a review of the rules of writing direct speech, youngsters try their hand at creating dialogue used by characters they create in their writing. They focus on...
Curated OER
Writing a News Story
Students practice using their target language by writing a news article. In this foreign language writing lesson, students create a fictional "hero" in their city which they write a fictional news article about in their new...
Curated OER
The Rooms in a Home
Enhance your foreign language young scholars' skills to describe a house. After reading a description of rooms in a house in their target language, they work to answer corresponding questions correctly. Additionally, they view a...
Curated OER
"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare
Jacque's soliloquy from Act II, scene ii of As You Like It sets the stage for a close reading exercise that models how to approach difficult, dense text and enables readers to practice reading comprehension and analysis...