Yarns, Whoppers and Tall Tales
These lessons will introduce students to characteristics of tall tales and help them develop an appreciation of this genre of American fiction. They will practice writing summaries from information they have gathered and organized. They can plan and write their own tall tales.

Poetry Portfolios
Through a weekly poem, students explore meaning, sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts.

Aesop and Ananse: Animal Fables and Trickster Tales
Students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures.

Fairy Tales Around the World
In this lesson plan, students read and learn to understand fairy tales in order to recognize their universal literary structures and themes. They compare similar fairy tales from different cultural and geographic regions of the world and write about conflicts between good and evil and imagery and motifs that are repeated across many cultures and time periods.

A Bear of A Poem
Using familiar childhood stories, students will work together to create a poem that is “found” in the language presented in the picture books they read. Children will look in texts for writing that inspires them—looking for favorite words, phrases, and sentences. Working together, students will combine their words and phrases to create a class poem. When complete, the new piece will be shared as performance poetry.

10 Characters From American Folklore
Students learn about Pecos Bill, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and five other characters from America's folk history. Student work sheet included.

Rain, Ice, Steam:  Using Reading to Support Inquiry About the Water Cycle
After exploring the different parts of the water cycle, students demonstrate the knowledge they have gained by working in groups to write and perform a play.

Teaching About Story Structure Using Fairy Tales
In this lesson students read a variety of stories and then apply them using storyboards and a writing exercise. Students progress from shared writing to guided writing; independent writing is also encouraged.
 

Kids Space: International stories written by kids, for kids and about kids

Forms of Poetry for Children: A list of poetry types for children with many online resources.

Francine's Play-maker:  Use Francine's play-maker at PBS to make up your own classroom dramatic production

Create Your Own Scenario: Kids can write their own play using a cast of characters provided on this site.
 

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