Students will be able to use a combination of drawing, dictating, or writing to narrate a single event and provide a reaction to what happened. This lesson centers around the book "The Song and Dance Man", a great Grandparents Day activity!

Need help planning ways to creatively teach your students chronological order? Here's a great place to start. While the site is specifically geared toward the middle school student, it is a teaching idea which could easily be adapted for lower or higher levels. Good connection between visual and written literacy skills.

Help young students move from drawing pictures into writing simple stories. Good plan for having students put pictures in sequential order and teaching them about sequential order.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will explore great works of American literature and consider how writers reflect the time period in which they write. They will write two literary analysis papers and also work in groups to research and develop anthologies of excellent American stories.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and analyze stories from several 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century American authors. After researching a time period, they select stories from that period to create an anthology. The readings enhance their understanding of the short story, increase their exposure to well-known American authors, and allow them to examine the influence of social, cultural, and political context.
Students examine elements of short stories and have an opportunity for close reading of several American short stories. During these close readings, they examine the ways that short story writers attempt to explore the greater truths of the American experience through their literature.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

If you were to write a short story about this decade, what issues might you focus on?
What defines a short story? Just length?
To what extent do these stories reflect the era or decade in which they were written?
To what extent are the themes they address universal?

CLASSROOM FILMS

History.com has short videos on the Vietnam War (“Vietnam” and “A Soldier's Story”).

In this lesson, students will be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's theory on the “single effect” of the short story. They will read a passage from Poe as well as his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Working on higher-level thinking skills with your readers is made easier with this lesson. You will have your students connect with and analyze a mystery story at their grade-appropriate level. Lesson plan, printable worksheets, and evaluation.

Students investigate the complex, nonlinear style of The God of Small Things and its themes of history, colonialism and love, focusing on the novel's literary devices, plot structure, and language.

Need help picking out the elements of a narrative? Check this site out from Capital Community College, and you'll see some background information, a sample essay, and directed questions to ask yourself about a text. W.9-10.3 Narrative, W.11-12.3 Narratives

This tutorial surveys the uses and limitations of first-person narration in literature. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9

We all know that the most effective way to teach reading is to start with reading. This lesson uses that approach with writing story leads.

While this lesson is designed to aid in communications technology, the concept and procedure of the lesson can be readily used in any class. The main concept taught is organization and developing chronological order.

Introduce your primary students to retelling and sequencing skills. Will also help move your students to higher-level thinking which deals with characters, setting, and plot. Site offers one week's worth of lessons.

Students discover the novel Waiting, examining such topics as the Cultural Revolution and Confucian values as well as tensions between old and new, rural and urban, and communism and capitalism.