High School Creative Writing Unit Plan and Narrative Project | Love Stories | Valentine's Day

This Common Core-aligned unit plan helps high school Creative Writing teachers facilitate the study of love's influence on human psychology and the drafting of original short stories that explore the effects of romantic, platonic, and/or familial love. The elements of this project are comprehensive, ideal for Valentine's Day, and include the following:

• A standards-based unit plan: This document conveys the unit's transfer goal, essential questions, enduring understandings, learning targets, academic vocabulary, formative assessments, summative performance tasks, and pacing guide.

• Detailed directions: This document provides a concept overview and clarifies the project requirements, as well as the formatting requirements.

• A standards-based scoring rubric: This document helps students understand the criteria for evaluation and streamlines the grading process for teachers.

• A PowerPoint presentation: This visual aid provides an overview of literary devices.

• Anchor texts: Four public domain narratives representing various genres are included, each emphasizing the theme of love ("The Christmas Ghost" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "The Frog King" by the Brothers Grimm, "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant, and "The Snow Man" by Hans Christian Andersen).

• Prewriting activities: These materials complement the anchor texts, helping students study the authors' narrative techniques. Answer keys are included.

• A story outline: This document helps students organize their initial ideas for drafting their own original narratives.

• An editing document: This document may be used to self-evaluate one's work or to offer peers feedback on their work.

Materials are delivered as printable PDFs. (Alternatively, a Google Drive option is available.)

Unit plans are available for a variety of writing tasks:

• Writing Adventure Fiction - Google and printable versions

• Writing Dinosaur Tales - Google and printable versions

• Writing Fantasy Fiction - Google and printable versions

• Writing Gothic Fiction - Google and printable versions

• Writing Realistic Fiction - Google and printable versions

• Writing Science Fiction - Google and printable versions