Students use graphic organizers to explore plot in circular stories while focusing on prediction and sequencing. After exploring the features of circular plot stories, students write their own stories.

Students analyze dialogue tags used with male and female characters in a book they have read. They then evaluate the message the dialogue tags convey about gender roles.

Students listen to fiction and nonfiction read-alouds and explore selected Websites to identify factual information about animals. This lesson focuses on ants, but can be adapted to any animal.

This lesson provides a wealth of ideas for using notes in the classroom to promote authentic writing among children.

Students analyze the elements of a novel in many different genres and then hyperlink these pieces together on student-constructed Websites.

This lesson encourages students to use rhyming words to write rebus poetry modeled on rebus books, which substitute pictures for the words that young students cannot yet identify or decode.

Students explore multiple genres through genre studies. They record evidence of genre characteristics on bookmarks as they read, and finish by giving a book review for their classmates.

In this author study, students listen to and discuss four books by Leo Lionni. They identify similarities and differences in the stories and then compare two stories of their choice.

Students analyze stylistic choices and grammar use in authentic writing, focusing on the use of the semicolon in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Students attend a 19th Century Victorian party to celebrate Scrooge's new outlook on life. They research characters from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and assume those personas for the party.

Students analyze scary stories to 'break the code" of horror writing and use what they learn to write scary stories of their own.

This lesson uses comic strip frames to define plot and reinforce the structure that underlies a narrative. Students finish by writing their own original narratives.

Students find examples of specific stylistic devices in sample literary passages then search for additional examples and explore the reasons for the stylistic choices that the author has made.

Tap students' desires to doodle and draw by having them create a Graffiti Wall, using graphics to discuss a piece of literature that has been read by the whole class.

Students explore stereotypes in the media and representations of race, class, ethnicity, and gender by analyzing comics over a two-week period and then re-envisioning them with a "comic character makeover."

Students engage in a brief writing assignment that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally.

This twist on readers theater has students prepare original news programs based on incidents in a recent reading, as they explore standard literary elements of character, conflict, resolution, and setting.

Students name unnamed chapters in a novel they are reading. They discuss possible chapter names, considering accuracy, word choice, and connotation, before settling on a choice.

Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.