Using Movie Maker, sixth graders make an eight frame movie based on a story they have written. They choose music clips, select pictures from PowerPoint, and make their movie. The lesson should take about ten days to complete.

Explore the concept of retelling a story with the Gingerbread Man. Read various gingerbread man stories with your class. They will create character puppets and retell the story to one another and in small groups. Additionally, they will...

Explore language arts by completing a story worksheet in class. Readers will identify the importance of plot, setting, and character while they write their own short story. They also retell their story to a classmate and participate in a...

Youngsters retell the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They write a sentence for speech bubbles for a character in the story, identify the phrases that can be used for retelling a story, and in small groups write a sentence for the...

Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

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. 

Learn about the animals of Australia with a language arts lesson about an Australian folktale called, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail. After reading the story as a class, kids discuss events and characters from the book, retell the...

After completing Juliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, class members rewrite a traditional fairy tale, making three significant changes to illustrate a theme of their choosing.

Students explore storytelling by participating in an image analysis activity. In this story structure instructional activity, students read the book Cookie's Week by Tomie dePaola and retell the story to their teacher in sequential...

Stella Louella’s Runaway Book launches a study of point of view and storytelling. After reading the tale, class members retell the story from the point of view of another character. The scripted plan, developed by a teacher candidate,...

Writers explore storytelling and focus in on verb tenses. They will work with a partner to generate a story and then switch partners and retell the story. They also complete past perfect continuous and past continuous verb tense worksheets.

This scripted instructional activity suggests using the journalist’s five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) to teach readers how to summarize a story and to how to distinguish between significant and supporting details. A template and...

Invite your pupils to tell and show what happened in a story that they read by filling out this organizer. Using images and words, kids can fill out the six panels provided here to demonstrate understanding of the sequence of events and...

Help readers recognize elements in a story. They will use pictures and text to gain meaning from written material. Have learners listen to the story A Plump and Perky Turkey and participate in a discussion. They recognize the...

Have your class explore Buddhist Jataka Tales to compare and contrast them to European fables. After defining fables, Jataka tales, and the elements of each, learners identify themes and patterns for both types of narratives and the...

All ages love to engage in cartoon writing –- little do they know that they actually learn quite a bit from it! In an instructional session focused on literacy syntax and vocabulary, your pupils work cooperatively to draw six pictures...

Students look at picture books and describe the story elements. In this picture book lesson, students retell a story and begin to understand the story elements of plot, setting, and characters. Students complete graphic organizers to...

Students retell a story using computer software. In this story elements lesson, students retell the story giving the plot, setting, characters and moral using Pixie software.

A unit covering second-grade skills reviews 16 letter-sound correspondences, tricky words, and punctuation. Readers provide context for examining story elements, and pupils participate in close reading and write narratives retelling a...

Study and research the American Civil War in this explanatory writing lesson. Middle schoolers complete six activities to learn about the American Civil War and soldiers' views of the war. The lesson includes several options to complete...

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...

Give this literacy worksheet to your beginning readers to help them draw out key details and retell in their own words. They read a short fantasy story about a bear in space which includes dialogue, onomatopoeia, and a simple story line....

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...