This lesson will help your students summarize short stories and describe how characters respond to challenges using a story map. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support lesson for the Story Mapping Group Work lesson plan.

Through this lesson, your students will use academic vocabulary to discuss character traits, author's purpose, and the sequence of events in a story.

Use this lesson to teach your students to describe the similarities between stories with words that signal comparison. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the The Same or Different? You Decide! lesson.

Students will have a blast turning a reading passage into a Reader's Theater skit. This lesson teaches them to use dialogue to help readers understand the experiences of different characters.