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Creating a Story Map Using Kidspiration
Fourth graders use computer software, Kidspiration, to create a graphic organizer detailing main characters, setting, problem, solution, and theme of their favorite short story. Students also discover how graphic organizers can help them...
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Snapshots of a Short Story
First graders will be creating and filling in a graphic organizer using Kidspiration, as a pre-writing activity for their short story piece. They then use their graphic organizers to write their entire short story. Once written, the...
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Movie Books- Children's Stories
Students create movie books that make their stories come alive. They share these movie books with non-readers in an attempt to inspire them.
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Harmony and Expression in Writing Form
How do you write an interesting beginning, middle, and end of a story? With this instructional activity, young writers look to other stories as examples. Then, they use some of the attached graphic organizers to help them create their...
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Varied Beginnings: Research Process / Narrative Writing Techniques
What's the best way to start a story? Learners write a memoir using effective openings. They research the process and work through a list of hooks to use in their writing. They use at least two hooks to begin their personal memoir. A...
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Story Retelling
Students explore storytelling by participating in an image analysis activity. In this story structure lesson, students read the book Cookie's Week by Tomie dePaola and retell the story to their teacher in sequential order. Students...
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Lesson Plan 8: Setting and Mood
What mood does this story evoke? How are setting and mood linked? Young novelists explore the different emotions brought about by writing, starting by journaling things that inspire their own feelings. Examine the word mood, looking into...
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Silly Story Starters
Fifth graders brainstorm some ideas for each of the columns. As they call them out, write some on the sticky notes until each sticky note is used for each column They stay in the same groups; have each group draw one sticky note from...
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Write a Story
Here is a great way to explore narrative writing! Learners review a previously constructed story map and identify the characters, setting, and main events in the book Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock retold by Eric A. Kimmel. They...
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Lesson Plan 10: Writing Really Good Dialogue
Boring dialogue can run a great story into the ground; get your novelists using dialogue as a tool to move their story into deeper and more developed territory. As part of a larger writing series, this lesson has a worksheet that can...
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Semiotics and Set: Year 9
Drama enthusiasts explore the importance of set and action in conveying dramatic tension. They act out a polished dramatic piece using the set as a key component of their story. This should be connected to setting as it is also used in...
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Personal Strengths, Talents and Goals
It's important to discuss individual strengths, goals, and talents. With a partner, fourth graders create a PowerPoint presentation of one of their classmates, showcasing their goals and talents. They then complete a worksheet showing...
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Write a Round-Robin Story
Students discover the elements of a story (introduction, plot, climax, resolution, denouement). In groups of five, one student writes an introduction and passes it to the next person, who writes the plot and passes it to the next person,...
Education Oasis
Creative Writing Unit: Analyzing, Interpreting, Discussing and Writing Various Genres of African-American Literature
A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...
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Write a Number Story
Students view number stories at a website and write their own. They insert a drawing and the text of their number story using a software such as PowerPoint to create a presentation for the class and parents.
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Story Totems
Students write and illustrate a story to describe the habitat and life cycle of a selected animal. They write and publish their story, and create a picture of the animal on a wooden board.
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Great Expectations: Group Writing
Examine the differences between totalitarianism and democracy in this writing instructional activity. Using the same format and theme from Great Expectations, young writers work in pairs to compose their own short stories. They follow...
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Telling A Story
Students brainstorm all the possible scenarios that would help them tell a story in detail with the whole class and with partners. They create web outlines to create a name story and then illustrate it with creative grammar usage and...
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Make Up Your Story
Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...
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Introduce Vocabulary: Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride (Priceman)
What a fun way to explore new vocabulary words! Marjorie Priceman's book Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride offers plenty of new words for scholars to learn in context: amateur, assembled, demonstration,...
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Introduce Vocabulary: Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (Hatkoff & Kahumbu)
The heartfelt true story of Owen the hippopotamus and Mzee the 133-year-old tortoise will have budding readers engaged as they practice vocabulary in the context of Isabella Hatkoff's nonfiction story. Although you could include more,...
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Adventure Story
It's always fun to make up something together as a class. This fine instructional activity has children make up and illustrate a collaborative adventure story. The essential elements of a good story (setting, characters, plot, help,...
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Story Plan Graphic Organizer
In this story planner graphic organizer worksheet, students fill in the genre, characters, setting, plot, complication and resolution before they use the information to write a story. They also list useful words that will be used.
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Setting the Story: Techniques for Creating a Realistic Setting
“It was a dark and stormy night.” Thus begins the 1830's novel Paul Clifford and, of course, all of Snoopy’s novels! Encourage young writers to craft settings for their stories that go beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s often-mocked phrase...