Mark Twain's frame story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" provides an opportunity for a study of this story-within-a-story pattern. Using an illustrated template, class members record a plot summary of the frame story...

Ninth graders identify story elements utilizing a plot summary organizer. In this plot summary instructional activity, 9th graders discuss the elements of a good story and listen to the story of the three little pigs. Students complete a...

Is The Iliad part of your curriculum? Check out a resource that offers something for those new to teaching the classic and those with lots of experience using Homer's epic. Plot summaries, discussion questions, activities abound in...

Eighth graders implement plot summary organizers to identify essential elements such as conflict and resolution in literature. In pairs, they retell fairy tales to each other and complete plot summaries about them. As students read new...

This may be a lot to ask of a high schooler, but then again, who knows? Pupils work in groups to explore, write, and then perform an original opera. They view versions of The Magic Flute and La Traviata, then compose a plot, characters,...

In expository writing, it is important to back up claims with evidence and details. Help your class to develop their writing with notes on different types of evidence. Once they have the basics down, practice with a sample thesis and...

Analyze point of view and how it affects a literary work with this lesson. Middle schoolers create a written piece that focuses on point of view. They review the literary term "point of view," and explore examples of the term in text....

Seventh graders explore the various elements found in the advertisement of a dramatic experience. Playbills are created that reflect the plot without revealing the climax of the play. Costumes, set construction, and character description...

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

Writing a summary is much easier once you've laid out the sequence of events. Show readers how these two skills are intertwined using this graphic organizer. Review the meaning of sequencing first, presenting the chart and possibly...

Students explore plot development and how conflicts are resolved. In this plot development and conflict lesson, students discuss antonyms and list the ones they find in their story. Students complete online activities and write a summary...

Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...

Seventh graders write a few sentences explaining the most important events of their lives during the past year. As a class, they discuss why they chose the elements they did for their sentences. To end the lesson, they read a variety of...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Students read a given play. They choose the key scenes from the play and write a narration to carry the plot line between those scenes. They create a comic book that depicts these key scenes, complete with pictures and text balloons.

A fan of Ari's Crispin trilogy? Here is a packet that contains study guides for all three Crispin novels: The Cross of Lead, At the Edge of the World, and The End of Time.

Students practice using visualization to aid in their reading comprehension. After a read aloud of a selected story, students write a brief summary of the plot accompanied by an illustration of the characters they have visualized.

Third graders practice using visualization to aid in their reading comprehension. After a reading a chapter from the book "Charlotte's Web," students write a brief summary of the plot using their visualizations, aided by reading...

Dazai Osamu’s short story, “A Sound of Hammering” is the focus of a three-day investigation of modern Japanese literature and life in post-World War II Japan. The events in Osamu’s story mirror those in his own life, and give a...

Students explore The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  In this book review lesson, students examine the elements included in a book review, such as author, opinions of the book, summary, character information, main points and plot summary....

Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...

Review the terms denotation, connotation, diction, and mood in paragraph writing. After defining the terms, middle schoolers practice writing examples of both connotation and denotation. They complete a connotation and denotation...

Students investigate the dramatic elements of a Streetcar Named Desire. In this drama lesson, students explore the theme of the Tennessee Williams play as they read the play and watch performances of some of the acts. Students then write...

Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...