Who was the Radcliffe family? Young learners find out about the life and times of a family from long ago. They analyze the family portrait, write a story about the family, and then use their story to create thought or word bubbles which...

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

Relate the structure of the essay to the structure of a building. The class compares an essay to a building, with the writer being the architect, the introduction being the foundation, and so on. They use the visual representation of a...

Personal narratives are powerful things. Whether told from the first-person or third-person point of view, whether in the form of an essay, a short story, novel, or video, whether fiction or fact, they capture readers and give them...

Pupils write short stories. For this story creation lesson, students write their own story and include their previously written persuasive letters as a component of their new story.

Students, in groups, read and analyze the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor. They present their findings tot he rest of the class and then connect the various themes discussed to outside material, events...

Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to...

"The Masque of the Red Death" provides readers with an opportunity to research and plan a presentation about a topic related to Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story. 

Two versions of movie trailers for the film Mary Poppins launch a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lesson about how mood and tone impact a reader's experience of work. Using the provided list, readers identify the words that create the...

Encourage your class to consider a beautiful short film about a boy named Theo who happens to be visually impaired. Over the course of the lesson, pupils work in pairs, discuss their ideas and the film as a class, view the film,...

As part of their exploration of the American dream, class members examine primary source materials to compare immigrant experiences of those arriving early in our country's history to those arriving in the US after World War...

Bring this lesson on hubris to your short story unit. After reading Jack London's "To Build a Fire," young readers discuss the role of hubris in the protagonist's death. The lesson has connections to other short stories, such as "The...

Explore the structure of narrative writing with this fun, collaborative instructional activity. Start by reading aloud a short story, asking small groups of learners to fill in key events on a large story board prepared on the class...

Students combine creativity with the rigor of careful editing by adding music to their story. It forces them to focus on how they communicate the meaning of their story to the listener.

Explore the short story "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. First, read the short story and take notes on specific uses of the elements of writing such as characters, setting, plot, similes, personification, metaphors,...

Fourth graders write a short story using 100 words or less.

Seventh graders view a PowerPoint presentation about short story elements. They complete a plot diagram using a previously read short story. Students brainstorm events in the story. They discuss the difference between major and less...

They expected good soil and hearty crops ... but they found buffalo chips and grasshopper plagues. Using an advertisement encouraging famers to go west, budding historians examine primary sources including letters, photographs, and...

We often see other countries depicted in movies, but getting a close look at a typical day in the life of a young person from another country isn't as common. Give your pupils such a look with a resource that helps class members...

Students read "The Problem of Cell 13" by Jacques Futrelle and explore the mystery genre. In this mystery genre lesson, students read the short story and discuss the author's inclusion of locked room settings. Students then write their...

Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers. 

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. 

Cover Freytag's Triangle and examine Anton Chekhov's "The Bet" in this third lesson plan in a series of fourteen based around short stories. Learners take a quiz and discuss Freytag's triangle. They apply the triangle to "The Bet" and...

A new way to connect visual art and creative writing is on the horizon. Kids first identify the characters in the painting Rabbit Hunt, then write narrative from the perspective of one of the characters in the painting. They combine...