The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.

You could spend a full day discussing The Phantom of the Opera and not scratch the surface, but a set of lessons about the literary elements and themes of the musical production is a great start. Young thespians build upon the...

Refuse to alienate your scientific-minded young scholars during your creative writing unit. Learners explore how literary writing can reflect observable fact, and be based in actual science. The links include examples of fiction and...

When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...

Come up with a list of requirements for this expository essay on Esperanza's character in Esperanza Rising as a class and use the list to guide class writing. Here, learners will complete the first paragraph, discuss their notes for the...

Continue work on the two-piece poem that compares two characters from Esperanza Rising. Give class members a few minutes to finish their drafts. After they have a complete product, model how to critique and edit the poems with one group....

Dive into animation creation using Dreamworks® animated films. Compare and contrast characters, wonder and ponder why the plot is so important, and think of background and themes as your creativity unrolls onto paper.

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...

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

Partners choose, research, and analyze fictional or historical characters and design character life boxes to represent them. They also compose a rhyme royal, which they understand inductively by deconstructing examples. Based largely on...

Create baseball cards for literary characters with this lesson plan. It introduces learners to baseball cards, their components (stats, picture, etc.), and prompts them to draft and publish their own cards based on figures from...

Scholars read excerpts from the story, Heidi, in a three-part assessment that focuses on comparing and contrasting characters. Each part contains three tasks that challenge learners to discuss, answer comprehension...

Take a journey with your class as they explore the different settings from Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Middle schoolers write postcards in first person as if they were the characters of the story.  

Explore gender stereotypes by analyzing how male and female characters are depicted in comic books. Using the provided Comic Book Analysis sheet, students record the attributes of male and female comic book characters. Then the whole...

It's a play, it's a story, it's a puppet show! A lively resource provides academics with a creative outlet to express their views on diversity and social justice. Scholars are responsible for writing, creating, and performing a puppet...

Madness, violence, despair—the titular character of Shakespeare's Macbeth is spiraling out of control. Pupils first explore the topic with a collaborative jigsaw discussion. At the end of the instructional activity, they write about how...

How do you know what a character's personality is like if an author doesn't tell you? With a focus on character development in Esperanza Rising, pupils complete a jigsaw activity to analyze the actions of Mama, Abuelita, and Miguel. Once...

Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...

Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The lesson...

Reading is reading, whether it's for drama or English class. Boost reading fluency, accuracy, intonation, and comprehension while fostering creative acting skills. Kids read the provided tale of "The Lion and the Mouse" several times in...

One of my favorite things about this resource is that they use a standardized lexile to help you determine who should be reading what book. I also love this great teacher's guide for the book, The Class Election from the Black...

Work gets done faster when people work as a team. The ninth installment of an 11-instructional activity unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl combines character education with research skills and creative writing activities....

This may be a lot to ask of a high schooler, but then again, who knows? Pupils work in groups to explore, write, and then perform an original opera. They view versions of The Magic Flute and La Traviata, then compose a plot, characters,...

Bring the historical relevance of baseball into the classroom, as pupils discover the lessons learned from the breaking of baseball's color barrier by Jackie Robinson. Learners view video and analyze Robinson’s character, as well as his...