Writing a Mystery Story

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles provides the text for a fishbowl activity. Class members to sit in concentric circles, with the center circle discussing the topics from the book, and the outer circle observing the participants.

There are so many authors of short stories, and your class can have the chance to study quite a few. This seventh instructional activity in a series of fourteen continues the decision-making process for the final assessment: a short...

Hey, enough frabbajabba about that stool pigeon, Daddy-O! Using the West Side Story study guide, scholars explore the language of the play and read about its historical associations and themes. Pupils also engage in a Spectrum of...

Anita's iconic rooftop ode to American life in West Side Story is the focus of a lesson on immigration. As class members listen to "America," they follow along with printed lyrics, and discuss whether they agree with Anita's assessment...

West Side Story, the modern retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, won ten Academy Awards for its rousing depiction of the tale of star-crossed lovers. But how closely does the plot align to its source material? Compare and...

Challenge your class to hold a discussion about the theme of death in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead without direct teacher guidance. After going over the discussion protocols and quotes from the text, learners move in a circle...

Readers learn together with a group discussion activity. As they read William Shakespeare's The Tempest, high schoolers prepare for a fishbowl discussion in which three or four learners sit in the middle of a large circle and have a...

Where does it happen? When did it happen? These are two questions that play a key role in understanding the setting of a story. The fourth and final video in a Language Arts playlist uses a song to explain how the setting connects to...

The ambiguity in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre makes the novel a perfect choice for a shared inquiry discussion. Readers respond to open-ended questions with evidence drawn directly from the text. 

Bring some humor and fun to your keyboarding or language arts class! Middle and high schoolers begin a story in response to a prompt and then move from keyboard to keyboard, continuing to add to the story while the monitor is turned off....