A Character’s Challenges and Changes

Your 1st and 2nd graders will analyze how a character responded to a challenge.

A Character’s Playlist

What playlist of songs best goes with a character’s change over time?

Stories with the Same Problems and Solutions

Have you ever noticed that some stories have awfully similar problems? What if we looked for the most unusual way of solving a repeating problem?

Think Like A Historian

Here’s how effects be causes and causes can be effects!

Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween

What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

Paradox: Crocodile Dilemma

A crocodile makes a deal. But the deal creates a paradox. Can your students untangle a 2,000-year-old logic puzzle?

Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity

Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.

Motivation and Moral Development

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

Romeo and Juliet Summary

Romeo and Juliet in just about five minutes.

“Much Ado About Nothing” Summary

Shakespeare’s Much Ado summarized in just five minutes!

Twelfth Night Summary

An animated summary of Shakespeare’s utterly ridiculous “Twelfth Night.”

Hamlet Summary

It’s Hamlet in just about five minutes!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Nothing could possibly go wrong with a love potion on the loose!

Writing Summaries in Haiku

Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.

Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict

If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.

Better Stories Part 3: Literary Themes

A typical student narrative includes plot and characters but lacks a larger idea to hold it all together. This is where a lesson on themes comes in…

Better Stories Part 4: Character Archetypes

Are students’ characters a bit flat? Archetypes give them a strong foundation on which to build their own characters as well as a tool to analyze existing stories.