Improvise a Short Story through Jazz

Use short stories to teach English? Yes! Designed as a professional development opportunity for English language teachers, the ideas in this booklet can easily be adapted to advanced ESL/ELL classes.

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

How are short stories from South Africa connected to issues of civil rights in the United States? A unit plan uses South African short stories to discuss issues such as apartheid, colonization, and civil rights. Questions and activities...

This activity, which could be used in the lower grades for reading comprehension practice or with older learners as part of an ESL lesson, has learners read a short story and answer six comprehension and vocabulary questions. As part of...

A short story is only as strong as its characters, development, and conflicts. Encourage the young authors in your class to plan their stories based on the elements of narrative writing, all provided in brainstorming graphic organizers.

Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...

Students read short story selections, and work with classmates to produce commercials using digital video equipment.

Introduce your class to Glogster with this literary analysis activity. 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....

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...