Getting the Story

How should pupils read short stories? Set them up for this unit with an introductory lesson that goes over the main characteristics of a short story and starts learners off reading their first short story of the unit. In order to get a...

Get your writers composing their own short stories by following some or all of the ideas included here. You'll find short lessons and activities, handouts and assignment pages, sample paragraphs and sentences, and all sorts of great...

Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...

Grow an understanding of short story with a well-sequenced plan built around an Academy Award-winning short film. Class members explore the elements of an effective short story, and practice writing their own. They also watch the short...

If you're working on a unit about When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, use these notes to guide your instruction. It lists the key characters, prominent literary themes, chain of events in the plot, and other elements from the...

Hold a discussion in writing about coping strategies to prepare your pupils for reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman. After journaling, pupils come up in an organized fashion and write...

There are some words out there that just make you say, "Wow!" Encourage your class to find and use these words in their writing to make their work more interesting and complex. This packet goes through the writing process, beginning with...

Introduce your class to Edgar Allan Poe with a series of mostly self-guided tasks and assignments. Class members follow the list of tasks, starting by watching a video with background information and ending with a compare-and-contrast...

Don't just teach your ELA class about point-of-view, get them writing! Read the illustrated book I, Doko: The Tale of a Basket to your class and discuss how the story is told from the first-person point of view of an inanimate object: a...

Introduce your class to Glogster with this literary analysis lesson. At the end of your short story unit, they choose one literary element to apply to three short stories and make an online poster using Glogster. Samples are included. If...