High School Short Stories Activities

This is a sample station from my A Sound of Thunder Escape Room! The Escape Room includes 7 stations; this is the one that analyzes Bradbury's use of diction and syntax. Hopefully it will give you a taste of what the whole product is like! Please check it out in a separate listing.

15 Minute Composing Challenge (Freebie)

Bring creativity and excitement into your classroom with this fast-paced, Gothic-themed writing challenge!

This 15 Minute Composing Challenge (Freebie) introduces students to the Gothic genre through engaging timed writing tasks. Perfect for middle school and high school students, this free resource gives a taste of the full 15 Minute Composing Challenge while helping students improve their creative writing skills in a fun and structured way.

Students will plan, write, and review their stories using Gothic quotes to inspire suspenseful narratives. Whether working individually or in groups, this quick exercise promotes critical thinking, creativity, and reflection—all in just 15 minutes!

What’s Included:

• Task cards with Gothic quotes for students to use in their writing
• Structured timing: 3 minutes to plan, 10 minutes to write, and 2 minutes to review
• Teacher instructions to pace the activity and guide students

Use this freebie to spark student interest in creative writing, or as a warm-up to more detailed lessons. If you enjoy this free resource, explore the full version for more prompts and activities!

This freebie offers just a taster of what the complete resource provides. If you found these prompts engaging, the full version includes more quotes, a wider range of activities, and extra tools to deepen your students' exploration of Gothic literature. Check out the full version with 5 different prompt cards, plus 3 beginner prompt cards and 2 extension prompt cards: 15 Minute Activity: Gothic Creative Short Story Writing Prompts & Activity

P.S. Follow EduHive Learning Resources for more creative teaching tools, and feel free to share your feedback—I would love to hear from you! Bee

Keywords: creative writing, composing challenge, Gothic literature, writing prompts, middle school writing, high school writing, ELA activities, quick writing exercise, free TeachShare resource, teacher, educator, homeschooling/homeschool, tutoring/tutor.

The Burglar's Christmas By Willa Cather: This introductory Google Slide lesson provides digital pre-reading information for the story’s author and genre. Bold photo visuals and engaging video clips support the story details. The lesson includes an in-depth vocabulary study, practice, assessment, and printable organizers.

This standard-aligned material is for use with whole group, small group, or independent work for regular ed, learning support, ESL or virtual/homeschool classrooms

**PDF link to text is included**

Google Slides:

1. **Author Biography** We provide author biographies for each short story. This adds depth to the lesson, allowing students to appreciate the story in the context of the author's life experience.

2. **Setting**Highly informative slides include maps, historical images and intriguing video links allowing students to have a deeper understanding of the location and time-period in which the story takes place. This is a crucial element when preparing students to read outside their own worldview.

3.**Bold Photos: ** Visual learners will thrive with our visually appealing slides, featuring bold and relevant images that help reinforce vocabulary concepts and make learning more engaging.

4. **Vocab with Concise Definitions and Part of Speech: ** Our lesson provides clear and concise definitions for challenging vocabulary words, ensuring that students understand the meaning of each word in context. Understanding the parts of speech is crucial for effective language comprehension. Our lesson includes sections dedicated to identifying the part of speech for each vocabulary word.

Vibrant Vocab Slides (despondently, miserable, reckoning, introspection, failure, splendid, clench, journalist, burglar, courage, shame, restless, forbidden, poverty, forgiveness)

5.**Quizlet Practice Link ** Reinforce learning and encourage self-assessment with Quizlet practice tailored to the vocabulary words covered in the lesson. This interactive tool allows students to review and quiz themselves.

6. **Fun Fact Images and Videos** These features highlight unique elements of the text to aid comprehension

PDF FILE.

Plus, each ZIP file comes with a PDF folder containing printable worksheets to be used with the lesson!

**Grammar Sort**

Strengthen language skills with integrated grammar review sections, ensuring students can apply the vocabulary words correctly in their own writing and communication.

**Connotation Sort**

Dive deeper into vocabulary nuances by exploring the connotations of words, helping students grasp the subtle shades of meaning and usage.

**Context Clues Sentences, Word Bank and Key: **

Our lesson includes carefully curated sentences that employ context clues, enabling students to decipher word meanings from surrounding text. This fosters independent comprehension skills. These worksheets can be used for practice or assessment.

**Vocabulary Organizer**

This worksheet allows the students to infer the meaning from the animated vocabulary slide. After students complete the organizer, it is a great reference sheet.

**Synonym and Antonym Word Study**

The graphic organizer allows the students to explore the variations in meaning of the new vocabulary word.

DIGITAL USES IN THE CLASSROOM:

· Introduce new story

· Provide backstory to text

· Stimulate group discussion

· Create predictions about text

· Use as distance learning resource

· Post on webpage for review

· Add to electronic notebooks

· Provide test review

· Prompt Writing or Research assignments

· Grammar study / parts of speech

· Discuss Word Connotation

Please be sure to view the preview and watch the video for detailed images and descriptions of the lesson.

This lesson is also available in PowerPoint.

Enjoy!

-From Kiwious About Vocab!

15 Minute Composing Challenge (Freebie)

Bring creativity and excitement into your classroom with this fast-paced, Gothic-themed writing challenge!

This 15 Minute Composing Challenge (Freebie) introduces students to the Gothic genre through engaging timed writing tasks. Perfect for middle school and high school students, this free resource gives a taste of the full 15 Minute Composing Challenge while helping students improve their creative writing skills in a fun and structured way.

Students will plan, write, and review their stories using Gothic quotes to inspire suspenseful narratives. Whether working individually or in groups, this quick exercise promotes critical thinking, creativity, and reflection—all in just 15 minutes!

What’s Included:

• Task cards with Gothic quotes for students to use in their writing
• Structured timing: 3 minutes to plan, 10 minutes to write, and 2 minutes to review
• Teacher instructions to pace the activity and guide students

Use this freebie to spark student interest in creative writing, or as a warm-up to more detailed lessons. If you enjoy this free resource, explore the full version for more prompts and activities!

This freebie offers just a taster of what the complete resource provides. If you found these prompts engaging, the full version includes more quotes, a wider range of activities, and extra tools to deepen your students' exploration of Gothic literature. Check out the full version with 5 different prompt cards, plus 3 beginner prompt cards and 2 extension prompt cards: 15 Minute Activity: Gothic Creative Short Story Writing Prompts & Activity

P.S. Follow EduHive Learning Resources for more creative teaching tools, and feel free to share your feedback—I would love to hear from you! Bee

Keywords: creative writing, composing challenge, Gothic literature, writing prompts, middle school writing, high school writing, ELA activities, quick writing exercise, free TeachShare resource, teacher, educator, homeschooling/homeschool, tutoring/tutor.

"Baseball in April" by Gary Soto: this introductory Google Slide lesson provides digital pre-reading information for the author, genre, and setting. The lesson also includes vocabulary study, practice, and assessment.

GOAL: to prepare each student to read rigorous literature by front-loading story elements critical to comprehension aligned to standards

AUDIENCE: whole group, small group, or independent work for regular ed, learning support, ESL or virtual classrooms

PDF FILE. Plus, each ZIP file comes with a PDF folder containing 8 printable worksheets to be used with the PPT lesson! These printables include Connotation and Grammar sort, Word Study, and Vocabulary Quiz with optional word bank and answer key.

Google Slides:

• Opening slides

-genre, genre video, author photo, short bio and author video

-Prereading discussion questions

-Baseball video

• Setting slides

-Location photos with map

-Video of Fresno, California

-Time period photos with live link to period music clip!

• Vibrant Vocab slides: (grunt, reassurance, foul, obnoxious, winced, resentful, confidence, bleacher, accurate, spite, grounder, taunted)

-photo appearing without word for inference making

-vocab word which 'slides in' so photo can be first WITHOUT the word

-part of speech

-concise definition

• Differentiated Worksheet/Answer Key-used as a pretest, posttest, or practice

• Quizlet link

• Part of speech sort

*Connotation sort

*Vocabulary organizer

DIGITAL USES IN THE CLASSROOM:

· Introduce new story

· Provide backstory to text

· Stimulate group discussion/prediction

· Create predictions about text

· Use as distance learning resource

· Post on webpage for review · Add to electronic notebooks

· Provide test review

· Prompt Writing or Research assignments

· Grammar study / parts of speech

· Discuss Word Connotation

PRINTABLE USES: word walls and interactive notebooks

Please be sure to view the preview and watch the video for detailed images and descriptions of the lesson.

This product is also available in PowerPoint!

"The Marble Champ " by Gary Soto: this introductory Google Slide lesson provides digital pre-reading information for the author, genre, and setting. The lesson also includes vocabulary study, practice, and assessment.

GOAL: to prepare each student to read rigorous literature by front-loading story elements critical to comprehension aligned to standards

AUDIENCE: whole group, small group, or independent work for regular ed, learning support, ESL or virtual classrooms

PDF FILE. Plus, each ZIP file comes with a PDF folder containing 8 printable worksheets to be used with the PPT lesson! These printables include Connotation and Grammar sort, Word Study, and Vocabulary Quiz with optional word bank and answer key.

— PDF LINK TO TEXT INCLUDED

Google Slides:

1. **Author Bio:** To connect vocabulary with real-world context, we provide author biographies related to each short story. This adds depth to the lesson, allowing students to appreciate the words in the context of the author's life experience.

2. **Setting**: highly informative slides include maps, historical images and intriguing video links to prepare students to have a deeper understanding of the location and time period in which the story takes place. This is a crucial element when preparing students to read outside their own worldview.

3. **Vocab with Concise Definitions :** Our PowerPoint lesson provides clear and concise definitions for challenging vocabulary words, ensuring that students understand the meaning of each word in context as it appears in the text.

Vocab slides: (commotion, glumly, quivering, reluctantly, rummaged, chanced, slate, nerves,instinct, association, privacy)

4.**Bold Photos:** Visual learners will thrive with our visually appealing slides, featuring bold and relevant images that help reinforce vocabulary concepts and make learning more engaging.

5.**Parts of Speech:** Understanding the parts of speech is crucial for effective language comprehension. Our lesson includes sections dedicated to identifying the part of speech for each vocabulary word.

6. **Grammar Review & Sort** Strengthen language skills with integrated grammar review sections, ensuring students can apply the vocabulary words correctly in their own writing and communication.

7. **Connotation Review & Sort** Dive deeper into vocabulary nuances by exploring the connotations of words, helping students grasp the subtle shades of meaning and usage.

8.**Context Clues Sentences:** Our lesson includes carefully curated sentences that employ context clues, enabling students to decipher word meanings from surrounding text. This fosters independent comprehension skills. These worksheets can be used for practice or assessment.

9.**Quizlet Practice:** Reinforce learning and encourage self-assessment with Quizlet practice sets tailored to the vocabulary words covered in the lesson. This interactive tool allows students to review and quiz themselves.

10**PDF file** 9 organizers, activities, and quizzes

11 **Fun Fact** photos and video links are inserted throughout to bring important elements of the story into context and aid comprehension

DIGITAL USES IN THE CLASSROOM:

· Introduce new story

· Provide backstory to text

· Stimulate group discussion/prediction

· Create predictions about text

· Use as distance learning resource

· Post on webpage for review · Add to electronic notebooks

· Provide test review

· Prompt Writing or Research assignments

· Grammar study / parts of speech

· Discuss Word Connotation

PRINTABLE USES: word walls and interactive notebooks

Please be sure to view the preview and watch the video for detailed images and descriptions of the lesson.

This product is also available in PowerPoint!