Students analyze characterization by creating their own superheroes or super-villains, complete with related gadgets and settings.

Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each story corresponds.

After critiquing a list of conventions for the genre, students read, view, or listen to a classic mystery, and then produce a mystery of their own, reflecting on the purposeful ways in which they adhered to or altered the genre conventions.

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

Students work in small groups to examine Margaret Atwood's use of and observations about language in The Handmaid's Tale. Through this activity, students discover and articulate overarching thematic trends in the book and then can extend their observations about official or political language to examples from their own world.

Using Beloved as a model of a work with multiple narrative perspectives, students use a visualizing activity and close reading to consider ways in which subjective values shape contradictory representations.

Students read a variety of picture books that contain elements of the hero's journey and use an online interactive tool to analyze the stories.

Using their prior knowledge of books containing letters, students show their understanding of genre by rewriting a story and reflecting on how traditional stories differs from stories told in letters.

In this graphical mapping project, students assign a value to the events, characters, and themes in a novel and think about how the elements of the story are all interconnected.

Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.

Students identify, explore and apply the elements of circle plot structures to their own stories by using graphic organizers, reading and writing stories, and using checklists to assess their work.

Students read picture books to explore the concepts of plot development and conflict resolution. They first learn about the connections between reading and writing, and then revise their own writing.

Students use an online graphic organizer to analyze the plot structure of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and three short stories.

Students read The Jolly Postman, in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail.

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.

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.

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.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices by rewinding the plot.

This lesson uses One Green Apple by Eve Bunting to teach how characters change across a text. It will also guide students through writing an epilogue to accompany their independent book.