Curated OER
Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Mixing Fact and Fiction
"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," from The Jungle Book, offers young readers a chance to examine how Rudyard Kipling uses setting and personification to bring to life the brave mongoose who battles cobras to protect his family. Class members explore...
Curated OER
Fractured Fairy Tale Worksheet
Explore fairy tales using this worksheet. Learners read parts of traditional fairy tales and then write their own versions. They complete five fairy tales in this manner. What a motivating way to cover this concept.
Wisconsin State Reading Association
Next Step in Guided Reading
Here are three guided reading lesson plan templates; each designed to meet the needs of a specific level of readers. Levels in focus are emergent, early, and transitional readers. Additionally, prompts to support your small group...
Curated OER
Audio Aesop: Listen to the Lesson!
Aesop's Fables are the focus of this language arts lesson. Young philosophers study and discuss the morals found in the most famous of Aesop's Fables. They write an original fable that teaches a common moral. A "Fable Listening Library"...
Curated OER
Fable Writing - Interdisciplinary Approach to Social Sciences
Before writing their own fables, class members select an animal or insect to use in their story and research its character, habits, movements, etc. After reading a wide variety of fables and identifying the elements of a fable, writers...
Weekly Story Book
Folk Tales and Fables
Pages and pages of engaging activities, worksheets, and writing projects on teaching folktales and fables await you! You don't want to miss this incredible resource that not only includes a wide range of topics and graphic organizers,...
Curated OER
What Makes a Novel a Novel?
As your authors prepare to write a hypothetical novel, they need all the inspiration they can find! Using a book they have already read (and enjoyed), learners complete a literary analysis by filling in eight short-answer questions....
Marion County Schools
Popcorn Literacy
Popcorn is a tasty part of a culminating activity designed to motivate readers to share important literary elements. The popcorn fills the inside of a white paper bag that is transformed on the outside into a presentation tool with the...
Curated OER
Original Children's Books
Bring the fun and creativity of children's stories to your language arts class. Middle schoolers write, revise, and publish an original student book which incorporates the elements of a short story. They put their story in the form of a...
Curated OER
Summarizing Key Information
Imagine the surprise when small groups present their Evidence Charts to the class and discover that each group has studied a different version of the Cinderella story. Irish, Ojibwa, Egyptian, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Mexican, and...
Curated OER
Gingerbread Baby's Point of View #8
Read the story Gingerbread Baby and use these various activities to connect to grammar, art, and point of view. In one activity, learners create character masks. They practice writing verbs on the back of the masks to tell what each...
Curated OER
The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe: Literature and Theater
Students read and discuss the literary elements of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. They explore the elements of dramatic performance and create a TV news program based on life in Narnia. They videotape their...
Curated OER
Drama/Theatre
Learners discover how setting, props, and character-action communicate information about the characters and the story. Access to videos and a video camera are important to make this lesson a success.
Curated OER
Be a Vishnu Avatar
Students write a story about a problem on earth. They imagine themselves as one of Vishnu's avatars or create another avatar for Vishnu who can solve the problem.
Curated OER
Peace Education | Wreath or Tree Craft
What is peace and what does it mean to our society? To understand why peace is celebrated and what character traits or concepts relate to the action of peace, learners engage in a discussion, story time, and a craft project. The lesson...
Curated OER
Half Man, Half Limping Rabbit
Read your class a folk tale from Romania then discuss it. As they listen they discover how the author sets the mood using English conventions such as foreshadowing, magical elements, and they look for descriptive language while looking...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Imagine a day in the life of a child who has to work 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. After viewing images and reading stories of child laborers, class members select an image and write a richly detailed narrative about a typical...
Curated OER
Activity 3: Composing Personal Narratives
What was your most (exciting, maddening, nervous, thrilling, etc.) experience in school? A part of a unit on narrative writing, in this lesson class members review the elements of the form and then choose an event when they learned a...
Harvard University
The Nouns of Geometry
Socratic questioning to teach Euclidean geometry? "The Nouns of Geometry," followed by "The Verbs of Geometry," and the misfit, "A Beginner's Story - The Equilateral Triangle" are designed to encourage learners to explore various topics...
Curated OER
The Outsiders Journal Guide for Chapter Six
In this novel guide learning exercise, students respond to eleven short answer questions about the plot and literary elements of Chapter Six in The Outsiders.
Curated OER
Using Dreams in Writing
C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength provides the model for using dreams in narrative writing. After a discussion of the purpose of dreams in Lewis’s tale, class members craft a story in which their dreams play an essential role.
Curated OER
Sally's Super Day
Second graders engage in a lesson that is about having a super day with an example of a fictitious child. They read "Sally's Super Day" and reflect upon the events and how they affected the character and the outcome of the story. The...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 2: So What's a Novel, Anyway?
What makes a novel a novel? Class members select a favorite novel, record their impressions on a worksheet, and then come together in groups to discuss the elements common to narrative writing. Next, they identify the characters, the...
Curated OER
Unforgettable Personalities
Students read an essay titled, "Unforgettable Personalities" to study the influence of character's traits on the resolution of conflict in a narrative. They discuss and complete a worksheet that compares their own personality traits to...