Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

There is nothing more exciting than allowing learners to express themselves through a creative medium. In groups, they write narrative stories, focusing on building a strong storyline and dialogue. Next, they transform their stories into...

The ninth in a fourteen-lesson series, this plan marks a sort of midpoint in a unit devoted to the study of short stories. Pupils learn about theme and work on their short story projects by adding to their blogs, checking in with the...

Life changes may cause stress. Here, scholars identify stressful situations in a peer's life and offer coping skills to make for a better day. A short story, "Stressed Out Sally," provides pupils with a look inside a bad day. After...

As a culminating assignment for a unit study of heroes that uses The Hobbit as the core text, class members engage in a multi-genre writing project.

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

Refuse to alienate your scientific-minded young scholars during your creative writing unit. Learners explore how literary writing can reflect observable fact, and be based in actual science. The links include examples of fiction and...

Art in one form can inspire art in another. Use images to inspire writing in your English class. The lesson described here is not detailed; however, the idea is strong. An engaging way to get class members interested in writing, the...

The American Revolution brought freedom to select groups and ignored others. An enlightening resource highlights the struggle of African Americans during the American Revolution and their efforts to escape slavery. Scholars analyze...

Analyze magazines as a class, looking carefully for the target audience, advertisements, and topics presented. Small groups then work as a publication team and receive a magazine that they have to "sell." Each individual has a different...

Students practice their creative writing skills and build cooperative learning skills. In this creative writing project, students review parts of a story. Students reinforce the concept of sequencing and develop stronger writing...

Focus on building suspense as well as evaluating web sites through creative writing. After introducing the idea of suspense and holding a discussion, class members complete a WebQuest, during which they find inspiration for their own...

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...

Students read and compare excerpts from The Odyssey and The Adventures of Telemachus. They create an original story based on a secondary character from The Odyssey as well as a sketch of one of the pivotal scenes from the story.

Looking for a great lesson plan on how to write a biography? Here, middle schoolers draw from magazine articles, novels, historical figures, and current events to choose a person, or character to write about in a biography. They follow a...

Your class can take turns describing a well know location or setting without giving its name, and the rest of the class can try to identify the location, based on the details given.  They chart the elements that helped in the...

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...

Students work together at figuring out the definition for what cold war means. For this social science lesson, students listen to "The Butter Battle Book" by Dr. Seuss and recognize how this story relates to the cold war between the...

Using personal experience, visual art, and music that evoke natural disasters, your older high schoolers create their own expressions of storms. Learners conduct online research about weather drama. They make their own expressive...

Third graders identify the three major parts of a story. After reading the book "Stellaluna," students discuss the beginning, middle and end of the story. They write a short story depicting the events that would happen if the story...

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

Sixth graders read the short story "Eleven". They write a narrative composition focusing on the use of voice. Students use a computer to create a pre-writing graphic organizer and type their final draft.

After having a bad day, Sally took scholars' suggestions and had a super day. Pupils listen to her newest short story then discuss the events that occurred. They sort each event by what was in her control and what was not. Participants...

Scholars complete a mid-unit assessment by analyzing a narrative text, In the Middle of the Storm. Learners determine the gist of the text, identify synonyms, make inferences, and answer text-dependent questions to demonstrate...