Thinking About Violence: Child Abuse

Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

Encourage your class to consider a beautiful short film about a boy named Theo who happens to be visually impaired. Over the course of the lesson, pupils work in pairs, discuss their ideas and the film as a class, view the film, take...

How are short stories from South Africa connected to issues of civil rights in the United States? A unit plan uses South African short stories to discuss issues such as apartheid, colonization, and civil rights. Questions and activities...

“There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night.” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest,” which may or may not have been the first chapter of the original Dracula manuscript, is the focus of a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA). 

An in-class reading of Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece Meets the Big O introduces class members to the journey motif that forms the basis of The Hobbit.

Engage your pupils in short story and short film. Using a still from the film as inspiration, pairs compose short stories, which they later share and compare with other members of the class. They then watch the film and respond to a...

High schoolers combine creativity with the rigor of careful editing by adding music to their story. It forces them to focus on how they communicate the meaning of their story to the listener.

This activity may have writers evaluate short compositions, but their subjects are quite tall: great Americans. Pupils read one another's compositions and closely examine how specific phrases and diction contribute to shaping American...

Read the short story "The Child's Story" by Charles Dickens a timeless account of the journey we all take, from carefree childhood and spontaneous youth, through adulthood and marriage, and into our golden years.

Help readers learn to create their own open-ended questions for any text you are working with. Using Bloom's Taxonomy, learners begin on the lower levels and work their way up to form questions that focus on synthesis instead of simple...