ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Studying Character in Drama
Online lesson that allows students to study and follow a Shakespearean character throughout a play, analyzing their actions, traits and dialogue as clues to characterization.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: The Feature Story?fifteen Minutes (And 500 Words) of Fame!
Contains plans for five lessons that teach students how to write feature news stories and the difference between feature and hard news articles. Students interview each other as prewriting for writing their own human interest stories. In...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Editing Techniques: Writing a Reverse Outline
This slideshow lesson focuses on writing a reverse outline as a post writing strategy for assessing your paper for weak or missing aspects. It explains how to create the outline using a rubric if available and provides a skeletal example...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Folktales
This slideshow focuses on folktales including defining and providing background information, stating their common elements, and providing literary examples such as "Johnny Appleseed" and "Robin Hood."
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Forms
This slideshow lesson focuses on forms of fiction: short story, novella, and novel. It describes the defining characteristics of each, provides examples, and explains how to identify each.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Outlining Plot
This video tutorial focuses on outlining plot; it explains that we outline plot as a way to analyze it; to analyze plot, focus on main events and interaction involving main characters. It offers three methods for outlining plot:...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway:writing an Engaging Story With Literary Strategies to Enhance Plot
You will be able to use various literary strategies and devices, including dialogue and suspense, to enhance the plot in a short story. W.11-12.3b Narratives
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: Shakespeare's Universalism [Pdf]
In this lesson, students explore how Shakespeare was able to write in a way that his characters seemed to express real emotions and will look at the literary devices he used. An extension activity has them analyze what William Hazlitt...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Development of Characters Through Literary Devices
In this lesson, students learn how writers develop characters through a variety of techniques: narration, dialogue, interaction with other characters, interaction with setting, and characters' thoughts. RL.9-10.3 Analyzing Characters,...
Department of Defense
Do Dea: In the Beginning
This expansive self-guided unit hits on many objectives such as analyzing literature for author's purpose, figuring out the main idea/theme, understanding historical criticism, comparing and contrasting works from major historical...
Department of Defense
Do Dea: Story, Identity, Unity
Delve into the art of storytelling in this self-guided unit. Multiple topics are covered such as literary genres, the 7 elements of fiction, figurative language, theme, characterization, etc. At the end of the unit, write your own flash...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: How to Read and Analyze an Essay (English Iii Reading)
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson's activities, you will determine the purpose of description, narration, and exposition essays, analyze their literary devices, and examine text features. You...
Department of Defense
Do Dea: English 4; Loyalty and Betrayal
A learning module asking students to analyze fiction, examine symbolism and cultural context, read a section of The Kite Runner, practice context clues and Greek and Latin roots, and practice sentence variety with compound and complex...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Literary Elements and Techniques Collection
These animated shorts introduce or review literary elements and techniques like theme, setting, figurative language, characterization, and conflict. They can be used when students are just learning how to identify the most commonly used...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Understanding Literary Text: Archetypes, Motifs, & Plot in Drama
A learning module that teaches students about archetypes, motifs, and plot in six mini-lessons: Introduction, Character Archetypes, Archetypal Plot Patterns, Other Archetypal Patterns, Archetypal Motifs, and Your Turn.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Writer's Model: Literary Analysis Example 2
This seven-page essay provides an example of a literary analysis essay (using "Things Fall Apart"). Clicking on the "Writer's Guide" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page enables the user to get tips, directions, and...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Writer's Model: Literary Analysis Example 3
This seven-page essay provides an example of a literary analysis essay. Clicking on the "Writer's Guide" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page enables the user to get tips, directions, and explanations on the essay.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Out of Proportion
Students are asked to explain how natural disasters affect environmental health.
Ted Nellen
Cyber English (By Ted Nellen): Fiction: Short Story & Novel Fact Sheet
This is a short story or novel fact sheet offered as a Word document or a PDF. It includes places for title; author; URL; list of important nouns, verbs, phrases, and clauses; setting (includes definition); characterization (including...
Ted Nellen
Cyber English (By Ted Nellen): Characterization
This is a glossary entry for the term "Characterization" including a definition and the characteristics to be developed: Character's appearance, actions, thoughts, voice, and reaction from others.
Online Writing Lab at Purdue University
Purdue University Owl: Fiction Writing Basics
This resource discusses some terms and techniques that are useful to the beginning and intermediate fiction writer, and to instructors who are teaching fiction at these levels. W.11-12.3a Narratives
Yale University
Yale University: Elements of the Short Story
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...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: You're on a Gigantic Roll
In this lesson the writer will imagine and compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on a gigantic object moving through a specific setting and leaving destruction in its wake, modeled after the book James and the Giant Peach by Roald...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: A Picture Book Writing Lesson: Start With What Isn't There
In this lesson, students will describe a setting, attempting to set a mood for their readers in two paragraphs. Borrowing a technique from Stephen Kramer's two-page introduction to Caves, they will begin with a paragraph that explains...