What makes a story, a story? In this lesson, students examine the elements of stories. They learn to use pre-planning strategies to set their own stories up for success... before they even start writing!

Use this lesson to help students identify the elements of a fictional text while gaining more knowledge about parts of speech. Use as a stand alone activity or a support lesson for Fairy Tales: Identifying Story Elements.

Use this lesson with your students to teach them to describe the differences between stories with contrasting conjunctions. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Finding Similarities and Differences lesson.

Students will learn how to identify story elements and create a short and sweet summary. They will fill out a graphic organizer and solidify their understanding by creating illustrations to show major plot points that they find themselves!

This engaging lesson teaches students about the famous author Faith Ringgold. Students will explore two pieces of literature, comparing and contrasting story elements, then write opinion pieces to illustrate which book they liked best.

Reading can be a rollercoaster with its ups and downs! Use this lesson that features a rollercoaster-themed story map to teach your students about story structure and how to use a graphic organizer to visualize it.

Are your students hooking their readers? Use this creative and imaginative writing exercise that will bring student beginnings to life.

Good readers analyze texts by looking at similarities and differences. Use this lesson to teach your students to compare and contrast the story elements of two fiction texts.

Use this lesson to teach your students to identify story elements and compare them to another text's story elements. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Comparing Texts by the Same Author lesson.

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.