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Lesson Plan
Better Lesson

Better Lesson: Developing Characters and Experiences With Sensory Language

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Adding sensory languages makes your writing so good you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch it. This lesson will show you how to use descriptive sensory language in order to develop and capture the experiences and characters in a...
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Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Literary Nonfiction

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, you will learn how to analyze literary nonfiction, especially speeches, by making inferences and drawing conclusions based on evidence in the text. The...
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Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Write Literary Text That Develops Interesting Characters

For Students 7th - 9th Standards
A learning module that teaches students how to write an literary text with good characterization in four lessons: Introduction, Two Types of Characterization and Two Types of Characters, Choosing Your Characters, and Your Turn.
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Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Writing Literary Text With an Engaging Story Line

For Students 7th - 9th Standards
A learning module that teaches students how to write an engaging literary text in six lessons: Introduction, The Narrative Hook, Setting, Conflict, Plot, and Ending.
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Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway:writing an Engaging Story With Literary Strategies to Enhance Plot

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
A learning module that teaches students about writing a short story with a strong plot in seven mini-lessons: Introduction, Choose the Point of View, Figure Out What to Say, Suspend Readers in Midair, Write about a Central Theme, Read A...
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Handout
Yale University

Yale University: Elements of the Short Story

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This unit from the Yale University on elements of the short story is designed to develop student comprehension skills, particularly making inferences and generalizing. It also involves students in reading a number of short stories to...
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Short Adventure Stories

For Teachers 3rd - 8th Standards
Inspired by the interactive plot ideas here, writers will create an original three-paragraph adventure story. First, each writer will create an original adventurer. Next, each writer will place the adventurer in a brief, organized...
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Fracturing Tales Through Titles

For Teachers 2nd - 8th Standards
Students read The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman and then write their own fractured fairy tales using first-person point of view and dialogue. Teacher and student instructions are provided along with student writing samples, an...
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Serendipitous Character Descriptions

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
In this lesson plan, students create a unique character and develop a descriptive paragraph utilizing strong word choice.
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Action Words Bring Life to Setting Details [Pdf]

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Students learn how to develop their ideas through description and action words through a story scavenger hunt. [PDF]
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Lesson Plan
Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Education: Telling Your Story

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
A lesson in which students gain empathy for people who lived during a historical time period by writing a first-person story with experiences that would have happened during that time.
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Article
Harold D. Underdown

The Purple Crayon: Writing Dazzling Dialogue

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This site takes you through the process of writing dialogue in fiction, demonstrating when to omit, replace, or modify your original writing. Includes several examples and gives excellent advice for young writers. W.9-10.3b Narrative...
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Graphic
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University

De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Expand Story or History Text Based Dialog[pdf]

For Students 5th - 8th Standards
Students will use graphic organizers to help them make inferences about historical figures' feeings and motives. Students will summarize the information during an extension activity.
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Activity
Other

Writing Is Exciting!

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Students and teachers can use this site to find detailed information on effective and creative story writing.
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Activity
BBC

Bbc Bitesize: Higher English

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This site provides information about characters, plot, and setting of several different pieces of literature. It offers links to activities and tests on topic such as analysis and evaluation, creation and production, drama, novels, and...
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Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Read Write Think: Empowered Fiction Writers: Generating and Organizing Ideas

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Do your students' minds go blank when they confront a blank piece of paper? Speedwriting can help them get started with writing as well as come up with topics to write about. They can then incorporate their key ideas and phrases into a...
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Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Read Write Think: Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
This series of lessons involves student collaboration, writing and analytical skills, technology and imagination. While the instructional activity suggests use of FrontPage, it would also be possible to use a number of other authoring...
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Story Starters: Intriguing Titles

For Teachers Pre-K - 1st Standards
In this lesson, an interactive link included to help generate ideas for stories. A button is clicked and a topic is given. In a writer's notebook or journal, each student will use the topic given and develop it. [Requires Adobe Reader.]
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Unit Plan
Daily Teaching Tools

Daily Teaching Tools: Project Narration

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides graphic organizers for narrative writing. Students will be able to prewrite and draft their narrative writings more efficiently by using these tools.
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Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Read Write Think: Character Clash: A Mini Lesson on Paragraphing and Dialogue

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Contains plans for a minilesson that teaches about proper dialogue format while writing, specifically paragraphing. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as...
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PPT
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Character Development

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This lesson explains how characters develop in fiction writing. W.11-12.3d Sensory/precise lang narratives
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Website
Other

Write4 kids.com

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This site provides a great deal of information on writing children's stories. Contains "Advice, instruction, insider tips, insight and inspiration."
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Unit Plan
TES Global

Blendspace: Dazzle Me With Dialogue

For Students 4th - 8th Standards
An eleven-part learning module with links to websites and texts to use while learning how to write and punctuate dialogue.
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Article
Caro Clarke

Loving Your Characters Too Much

For Students 6th - 8th Standards
This article is the fifth in a series that is designed to help new authors with their new novels. This lesson focuses on your main character and what happens when that character lacks character flaws.