Where to even begin (or end, or support, or extend) your elements of fiction / short story unit in Middle School English Language Arts & Reading . . .
I’ll share my favorite mini-lesson topics with you here so you can think about what concepts you might want to include in your own fiction / short story unit. Now I have whole, entire, comprehensive bell-to-bell fiction/short story units for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade (separate units for each grade level), but the point of this blog post is to provide you with ideas for topics to cover if you just aren’t sure where to start.
Ten sets of mini-lessons for short story & elements of fiction:
Mini-Lesson #1: Elements of Plot
→ I begin by embedding videos, examples, and short little story scenarios into the basic vocabulary lesson that students need to feel comfortable using when they read, speak, or write about elements of fiction. Terms like setting, rising action, conflict, and more are important to cover, but in a natural way to where you can give examples through short video clips to get everyone on the same page. If you’re thinking that these are such basic terms students start learning about in early elementary, that’s true–but it doesn’t mean it stuck with your students over the years. We all need reminders and extra support in areas we’re not strong, so I like starting with a quick mini-lesson that reminds (or that re-teaches) the basic terms alongside videos and examples to reach all learning styles.
Mini-Lesson #2: Literary Devices
→ This is a way to go a little deeper with elements of fiction or stories beyond plot and basic characterization from Mini-Lesson #1. Using examples, scenarios, and even short video clips, this next lesson is about literary devices authors of fiction use like foreshadow, flashback, symbolism, and more to help your students recognize more of the impact that a short story can have on its reader.
Mini-Lesson #3: Impact of Setting on Plot
→ How the details of a setting impacts the plot of a story is a concept appearing more and more frequently on those lovely standardized tests! So how does setting impact plot? It has to do with why an author chooses to take up precious space on a printed page to describe the scene of a room, or the way a forest looks and feels. It has to do with what the objects have to do with the characters, and how the time, place, and details impact the decisions or motivations behind a character’s actions. It’s all there for a reason, and I like to start this process of exploration with my students by sharing with them one small paragraph at a time (that I wrote myself) and then ask questions about what they can infer about a particular character based on the description I wrote for the environment (the setting).
Here’s a specific example directly from one of my lessons about the impact of setting on the plot and characters:
“My grandma’s chocolate chip cookies never got old, never got stale. Her house smelled of the warm, sweet goodness of her oven and of the cookies that came from it. Now, looking back, I remember those cookies and her hands with warmth and love. Tomorrow, I’m making chocolate chip cookies for my own three grandkids.”
I wrote that↑ paragraph myself, and after sharing it with my students, I ask questions about the time, the place, the location, what we can learn about the narrator and the grandmother and their relationship JUST from that one paragraph. It’s also a great way to talk about LOGICAL inferences based on the text rather than IMAGINED connections based on what we think.
Get that entire lesson, plus dozens of others for all the other skills, concepts, and genres you have to teach by clicking the pink button below.
Mini-Lesson #4: Point of View
→ First and Third Person Point of View are still elements I have to cover with my middle school students before I can even move on to omniscient points of view or anything else. I have four practice tasks I use in stations, small groups, etc. before diving into any of the more in-depth points of view. I ask questions like this:
- The author’s choice of first-person narrator helps the reader —
- What is hidden from the reader as a result of this particular excerpt being told from the first person point of view?
- The first-person point of view helps the reader see —
- By using the first-person point of view, the author is able to show —
You can use standards-based question stems like that for 2nd person, 3rd person, etc… I like to stick with first person point of view in these types of question formats because I want students to feel confident that they know what a question is actually asking before moving on to other points of view.
Mini-Lesson #5: Identifying Theme
→ This is a concept that I spiral back to again and again, whether it’s in short stories, novels, poetry. It’s one of those concepts that students need multiple types of exposure to in order to start the “clicking” that we all know and love when students start to make sense of something.
For a mini-lesson all about theme, I love using Pixar Shorts (abundant on YouTube) because they’re quick to watch, quick to talk about, and you can review the concept of ‘theme’ in less than a class period.
Does it guarantee that students will forever after understand theme in every single novel, short story, or poem that they read from here on out? Not at all! But even if you can show one little video per week (make it your “Theme Thursday” ritual at the beginning of class every Thursday) then the repetition really will add up over time throughout the school year.
In the mini-lesson I created and love to use, I’ve curated links to my favorite little video clips along with a student response sheet so they can organize their thoughts and refer back to it anytime.
Mini-Lesson #6: Direct & Indirect Characterization
→ Where sometimes an author directly tells us about a character, other times it’s more ‘indirect’ which is when we as the readers must make inferences about a character for ourselves. Students often ask me “WHY” authors don’t just TELL us about a character, and my response is that we love a mystery and we love figuring out things for ourselves! Besides, in real life, we don’t “get told” about every single person we meet. We meet them, get to know them, make inferences about them, and it all unfolds over time. If each of us came with a little placard that listed our characteristics and personalities on it, how boring would that be! . . . And how sad if parts of the placard were incorrect or didn’t do us justice, and we lost out on life-long friendships simply because we “got told” about a person and never let the magic unfold on its own over time. This mini-lesson is the time for me to remind students of all the different ways authors reveal characters to us (and when you tie it to movies students have seen and get them talking about direct and indirect characterization there, it really does all click!).
Mini-Lesson #7: Writing a Literary Analysis Short Answer Paragraph
→ I’m all about templates when it comes to helping students put into writing the analytical discoveries they’re making! The most common issue, though, is the whole “I-know-what-I-want-to-say-but-I-don’t-know-what-to-write” situation. To combat that, I use a simple one-page graphic organizer that visually shows students what to say for each sentence, how to start writing each sentence, and what comes next in the paragraph.
Now some may argue that this is too “formulaic” but here’s what happens: Use the graphic organizer enough and your most struggling students can actually DO it with success while your more advanced students will eventually depart from the formulaic template and make it their own as they find their own writing style. It’s literally built-in differentiation.
Here’s the low-down on what’s IN the template for students:
- Topic sentence
- “For example” or “For instance” statement
- A few options for a follow-up text evidence statement
- Several options for a commentary statement
- Concluding sentence
In fact, click the button below to grab the entire ELA Essentials Bundle where one of the dozens of resources IS the exact series of templates (with gradual release template versions) that I described here already.
Mini-Lesson #8: Theme vs. Topic
→ I already mentioned theme as a mini-lesson I swear by in order to constantly reinforce and re-teach this rather abstract concept. . . But here, in this type of mini-lesson, we’re talking about theme vs. topic because it’s another layer that often causes confusion and misunderstanding for students. I love using Aesop’s Fables to dig into theme vs. topic because within minutes (rather than taking half a class period or a whole class period), you’ve put students into a situation where you can very clearly define the topic of the fable and then talk about the theme of the fable.
For instance, the topic might be a cat and a mouse who meet for the first time whereas the theme is avoiding trickery. I link to specific Aesop Fable video versions on YouTube, and I include my own personal real-life examples to illustrate the text-to-self connection with students.
Mini-Lesson #9: Types of Conflict in Fiction
→ Types of conflict refers to problems between characters, problems within characters (like their own personal inner struggles), and problems outside of the characters that are beyond their control (nature, society, etc.). I enjoy diving into building awareness in my students of these types of conflicts because I want them to really look at what motivates characters in fiction, how characters respond, and how they (my students) in real life might respond, too.
Mini-Lesson #10: Choice Board for Any Short Story
→ When students have a choice in how they interact with a story, they build ownership for how their chosen product will turn out. From digging into specific quotes, to sketching a pivotal scene, to re-writing the story in a different time or place to imagine how setting impacts plot and characters, the choice board can be used over and over again, all year long, for any kind of short story.
Grab ALL the fiction-related mini-lessons I described here PLUS dozens of others like this to support the other genres you teach by clicking the button below.
Ideas for Use:
*** Quick mini-lessons to introduce or re-introduce common concepts
*** Station / center work throughout the year
*** Test prep or review of fiction / short story elements
*** Extra resources for tutoring or additional support / intervention
Each mini-lesson contains a different academic focus as listed above, but each one also can be used to meet other standards or teaching moments as well. These mini-lessons are all in PDF format, but can be modified / uploaded into your Google Classroom, or printed out, or shared other ways as well with your students.
This particular set of mini-lessons are just that: Mini-lessons for quick review with built-in video clips, comprehension questions during teaching, etc. Some are designed to be taught and reviewed with students, while others are actual practice assignments for students to complete. There’s something for everyone in this bundle of resources that will support your various fiction/short story teaching needs throughout the year.
Answer Keys: Some of these mini-lessons are ‘teachable’ mini-lessons where answer keys don’t apply. Other lessons are discussion-based so that multiple interpretations or ideas are welcome. Finally, some lessons do include answer keys (worksheets, etc.) because in some cases, there are specific answers to the questions. Each mini-lesson is a little different, and they don’t each require an answer key.
Please note that there are not specific lesson plan procedures per se for these resources because it’s more like a library of items (see the mini-lessons numbered above) which you can pull from anytime, all year long, to support the most common teaching elements regarding elements of fiction & short stories.
CCSS > > You’ll be able to meet both CCSS and TEKS standards in the Non-fiction Expository Paired Passages I’ve put together as part of the Middle School ELA Essentials Bundle.
I hope all that helps! If it even helps your students a little bit while also saving you major time throughout the year, then that’s something to be celebrated😊
Click Here to grab your Middle School ELA Essentials Bundle at 80% off the normal price – It comes with the resources I mentioned already PLUS 100+ mini-lessons covering all the most important, most essential genres and concepts so you can jump off the struggle bus 🚌and find confidence, clarity, and creativity again in teaching!
