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Grades level iconsGrades 7–9
Session time icon1 Session: 90 Minutes
Genre information iconNarrative
Resource type iconLessons

Meet Your Protagonist!

Ryan Harty
By examining patterns in engaging published stories and applying a set of meaningful prompts, students will learn how to develop well-rounded characters that readers really care about.
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Lesson Instructions
What Your Students Will Learn

By examining patterns in engaging published stories and applying a set of meaningful prompts, your students will learn how to develop well-rounded characters that readers really care about.

Common Core Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3 Common Core Standards Icon
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.A Common Core Standards Icon
Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.B Common Core Standards Icon
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.C Common Core Standards Icon
Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.E Common Core Standards Icon
Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.4 Common Core Standards Icon
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.5 Common Core Standards Icon
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.10 Common Core Standards Icon
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3 Common Core Standards Icon
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.A Common Core Standards Icon
Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.B Common Core Standards Icon
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.C Common Core Standards Icon
Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences and events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.E Common Core Standards Icon
Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.4 Common Core Standards Icon
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.5 Common Core Standards Icon
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.10 Common Core Standards Icon
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Introduction :

Here’s a lesson I like to use near the beginning of a course. Students like it, and it gets them thinking about sophisticated fictional elements like character and plot—often without even realizing it! Most of the time, it encourages them to write good, engaging stories in which important things happen.

Session 1:
You Will Need
  • An engaging published story with important line of events and strong main character
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From This Publication

This book offers 50 creative writing lesson plans from the imaginative and highly acclaimed 826 National writing labs. Created as a resource to reach all students (even those most resistant to creative writing), the off-beat and attention-grabbing lessons include such gems as "Literary Facebooks," where students create a mock Facebook profile based on their favorite literary character, as well as highly practical lessons like the "College Application Essay Boot Camp." These writing lessons are written by experts—and favorite novelists, actors, and other entertainers pitched in too.

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