Dramatic Outlines

As a class, young writers learn how to develop a strong supporting character. They think and discuss a good friend they know, they use that friend as a basis for a potential supporting character. They create a supporting character as a...

Characters in a story are more than a name to remember. Use a character builder learning exercise to write out a character's appearance, background, personality, attributes, and story relevance, including whether they are a main or minor...

Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...

Lensey Namioka’s Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear provides an opportunity for young readers to observe how writers bring their characters to life. Each class member selects a character to trace through the novel, recording...

The works of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet and Britain's 2009 poet laureate, serve as a model for a writing activity that asks class members to select a character card, brainstorm lists of words, phrases, actions, and items associated...

Combining art, music, dance, and reading comprehension, this lesson is geared to reach all ability levels. After reading a variety of fables and discussing story elements and character traits, class members select a moral to use as the...

Supporting characters need detail and characteristics just like a main character. Keep your budding authors entrenched in detail as they write their novels. This instructional activity focuses on developing supporting characters using...

How can you foster a thoughtful learning community for your class? First, the class brainstorms a list of behaviors that will help make the classroom a great place to learn. Then learners group similar ideas together and come up with...

Write and work with authors on the Scholastic Website to promote the recognition of various genres.  Young writers will participate in activities based on the type of writing such as biography, descriptive, folktales, mystery, news,...

Delve into narrative writing that puts choice in the hands of the writers. Kids pick their own characters, emotions, items, and places from a list and tie them together in the exposition. Several questions help guide the writers toward...