Teaching Literary Elements Best Practices

Teaching Literary Elements in Middle School ELA: Best Practices Toolkit + Lesson Guide

Make fiction come alive with this flexible, teacher-friendly resource designed to help your middle school students read deeply, think critically, and stay engaged from start to finish.

Whether you're teaching short stories, full novels, or excerpts, this two-part bundle gives you both the plan and the tools to teach literary elements with purpose and confidence.

What’s Inside:

Folder 1. Teaching Guide – Where to Start & What to Teach

This instructional guide provides a clear, skill-based order for teaching fiction—starting with characterization and progressing through plot, conflict, theme, point of view, figurative language, and symbolism.

It includes:

• A roadmap for teaching literary elements across the year
• Mini-lesson ideas, anchor charts, and student-friendly definitions
• Engagement strategies, scaffolds, and tips for differentiation
• Creative and critical thinking extensions
• Suggestions for how to spiral and revisit skills all year long

Folder 2. Activities Toolkit – High-Engagement, Reusable Tasks

This best practices toolkit is filled with pre-, during-, and post-reading activities you can use again and again with any fiction text.

You’ll get:

• Pre-reading strategies that build curiosity and context
• During-reading tools like Stop & Jots, quote tracking, and reader response tasks
• Post-reading reflections, quick writes, and discussion extensions
• Activities that work for novels, short stories, literature circles, and reading stations
• A breakdown of what strong readers do—and how to model those habits in class

Why Teachers Love This Resource

• ✔️ Helps you know where to start and what to teach next
• ✔️ Encourages deep, standards-aligned reading with minimal prep
• ✔️ Avoids round-robin reading and boosts reader confidence
• ✔️ Filled with reusable activities and real classroom strategies
• ✔️ Created by experienced middle school ELA teachers
• ✔️ Flexible enough for any text or unit

Perfect For:

• Grades 6–8 ELA classrooms
• Whole-class novel studies
• Short story units
• Reading workshop, stations, or literature circles
• Teachers looking to build confident, independent readers
• Anyone seeking an ELA fiction unit they can use all year