Learners use an object to tell an interesting story from their lives. They write and present a short story about an interesting episode from their life and gather objects in a story bag, which illustrates their story to the class.

Bring Edgar Allan Poe's spooky story to life! After reading the short story "The Tell-Tale Heart," middle and high schoolers identify the theme, character traits, irony, and other story concepts. During pre-reading, they take notes,...

Young writers engage in a fun writing activity. They write three different sentences on three strips of paper. Then they get into groups of three, and take a look at all nine sentences that have been written. Their task is to write a...

Learners navigate through an online interactive virtual zoo to create imaginary animals by combining different parts of real animals. They write a short story about their combination creature.

What does empathy look like? Encourage your pupils to put themselves in another person's shoes with several writing and discussion activities that relate to a featured short film. Over the course of the lesson, individuals collaborate...

Use drawings as inspiration. Have learners doodle for 10 minutes before beginning the lesson. Then, have them use their doodles to inspire a story. Several writing activities are included here to play with writing. One of my favorites...

Explore word choice in writing. Your class listens to a short story entitled "A Nice Day" (included) and discusses how the story could be improved. Pupils replace the word nice throughout the story with various synonyms, then reread the...

Students examine the men and women who were a part of the Harlem Renaissance. Individually, they recreate their favorite pieces of art from the time period and create their own original works after reading poem from the movement. In...

It's hard to find inspiration; have your learners bring in a slew of magazines and search for inspiring pictures! They look for characters, setting, and possibly even conflict clues. They analyze the pictures they select, turn their...

O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is the classic example of irony in literature. Teach young writers about the ways irony can engage their readers with an activity in which they write scripts using dramatic irony, situational irony, and...

Dr. Seuss and Walter Dean Myers team up to cover the topic of prejudice. Using The Sneeches (about the culture clash between star-bellied and bare-bellied Sneetches) and The Glory Fields (about a boy coming to America on a slave ship),...

Poems carved into the wooden walls of the Asian immigrant prisons on Angel Island provide upper elementary graders an opportunity to study not only the story behind the poems but to also focus on the figurative language employed by the...

Learners identify the elements of a story. In this reading and writing lesson, pupils read the book, Tyrone the Horrible by Hans Wihelm and then identify the characters, setting, and plot of the story.This lesson includes adaptations and...

Refresh my memory please. Scholars quickly read over the Myth of Cronus to refresh their memories of the story. They then get in groups and write parts of the myth on sticky notes that relate to the elements of mythology, sticking their...

Upper elementary and middle school scholars study the economic factors that caused so many Arkansans to migrate to different parts of the country looking for work. Use this history lesson plan to help your charges gain a better...

There is power in words. Readers take a close look at three text to determine how language structures affect meaning, including include poems and recipes. Scholars analyze the language authors use by circling important words, underlining...

The ninth in a fourteen-lesson plan 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...

Bloom's Taxonomy is a great way to address the many levels of comprehension. With explanations and examples of each level, you can create questions that focus on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Compare and contrast the characters in John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Using a Venn diagram, kids write in different traits to describe each person, and note their shared characteristics in the middle section.

Feeling high is not the only side effect of abusing prescription opioids. Middle and high schoolers learn more about specific painkillers, including Fentanyl, Oxycodone, and Clonazepam, as well as their common brand names and extensive...

Students read a story with the short a sound. The story is about a rat. They access Starfall and select the story called Zac the Rat. They read the story out loud as a group then the students answer comprehension and skill questions...

Students reflect on the lives of older people they know, then research and debate the key issues surrounding scientific experimentation in anti-aging. They write a short story that reflects their own philosophical beliefs on aging and...

Students complete a variety of activities related to the short /u/ sound. As a class they recite a tongue twister, then trace and write the letter U. Students then listen to a list of words and identify the words containing the short...

Twelfth graders brainstorm ideas for their own science fiction story. Using worksheets, they sketch the plot and setting for their story. They create appropriate characters and develop their interactions among each other. They share...