About This Lesson
Short Story Unit Lesson Plan
Short Story Unit:
The short story unit will be a literature unit. The unit is structured for an eight grade English course and will take place over two weeks of one-hour classes. The unit will introduce students to different types of shorts stories and their origins. The unit will include elements of cultural influences, rhetorical devices, reading comprehension, and themes and symbols used in short stories. There will be both traditional and authentic assessments including short quizzes, written stories, and a unit project of an original short story using elements written out for students in a rubric. By the end of the unit, students will be familiar with the genre of short stories, be able to explain how they differ culturally in terms of purpose and be comfortable creating an original story using symbolism and their own cultural influences.
Day 1(Monday): Introduction to short stories/ Rip Van Winkle
Common core standards: “By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.”
10 min:Introduction: Students will get settled in class and the teacher will begin an open with asking the students what they know about short stories. Specific examples, different types, purposes etc.
15min: Using Power Point, the teacher will talk to the students about short stories. The brief lecture will cover common features of short stories and some recognizable examples for the students. Students will be taking notes, commenting and asking questions. Power point will be available foe students online after class.
35 min: Students will listen to Rip Van Winkle read to them form on online source will they read along with a paper copy.
Differentiation: Slides from lecture will be available online for those who have trouble with the pace of the lecture and the audio version of the story is to help those who may be slower readers or second language learners.
Assessment:The following day the students will be asked to define what a short story is and what it does in their own words.
Online Source: Link is an audio of the entire story of Rip Van Winklehttp://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/171/american-short-fiction/3461/rip-van-winkle/
Day 2(Tuesday): Fables
Common Core Standards: “Includes classical through contemporary one-act and multi-act plays, both in written form and on lm, and works by writers representing a broad range of literary periods and cultures. CA”
5 min: Students will take their short quiz. Describing what a short story is and what it does in their own words.
10min: Collect responses and redistribute to students. Students will discuss the answered that they wrote and compare them with a classmate.
15min: Short lecture on fables. Stressing both the common features of most fables and the cultural influences that have shaped these types of short stories. Students should be taking notes and the slides will be available for the students online.
30 min:The students will have time to read many of Aesop’s fables. They will read them for the remainder of the period.
Homework: To find a fable of a different culture than one from the site and read it.
Differentiation:Students who need more time on the initial quiz will have time to finish while the other students are sharing responses. English language learners will be given vocabulary sheets at the beginning of the unit to help them with any unit-specific vocabulary. Slides will be available online.
Assessment:The students will be asked, the following period, about the cultural differences that they found in the fable that they read compared to Aesop’s
Online Source: Link is a list of Aesop’s fables for students to read. http://www.fairytalescollection.com/Aesop.aspx
Day 3(Wednesday): Recap and Presentations
45 min: Students will be broken up into groups. The group will have time to create a short fable similar to one of Aesop’s fables and created a visual to present to the class.
15 min: The end of the period will be for the students presenting their short fables to the class.
Differentiation: The groups would be made by the teacher placing some advance students with those who are less advanced and bilingual students with those who are ELL.
Assessment: Assessment will be participation based for the day’s activity.
Days 4-5 (Thursday-Friday): Cautionary Tales
Common Core Standards:“Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.”
Day 4(Thursday):
10 min: The class will be opened up to a conversation about cautionary tales. What are they? What could they be? Does the class know of any examples? This will be student a driven and teacher directed discussion
10 min: A short lecture about what a cautionary tale is and what its purpose is. The students should be taking notes and engaging by asking and answering questions and commenting.
30 min: Students will be assigned a partner. The students will be asked to pick two different cultures and to find cautionary tales from each one. They will spend the remainder of the class searching for that story and reading it.
10 min: Those who have finished reading can meet with their partner and discuss the cultural differences between the cautionary tales. Those who have not can continue to find a story and read it.
Day 1 Homework:Finish reading the chosen cautionary story and Begin working on. Cautionary tale of their own due after the weekend.
Differentiation: A list provided with simpler cautionary tales will be provided for ELL students. Lecture slides will be available online. Partners will be mixed, not chosen, where higher achieving students will be placed with struggling students.
Assessment: Assessment will be the following day when the groups present their finding about cultural differences.
Day 5(Friday):
10 min: Partners will meet to discuss and organize finding about cultural differences in the cautionary tales read.
20 min: Students will present the cautionary tales separately and explain the lesson in the story, then as a pair explain the cultural differences that they found in their stories.
30 min: Students will have time in class to work on their own cautionary story that they had been assigned on Thursday.
Day 2 Homework: Finish the original cautionary tale by Monday.
Assessment: The assessment will be the cautionary tale turned in after the weekend.
Day 6-7(Monday- Tuesday): Poetry as Short Stories.
Common Core Standards: “Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.”
Day 6(Monday):
10 min: Students will come into class and their cautionary tales will be collected then redistributed.
20 min: Students will trade cautionary tales with a neighbor and they will read each other’s tales. Then students will volunteer to read aloud a story of their peers of their own to the class if they choose.
15 min: Class will switch gears and begin talking about poems as short stories. The class will have a short lecture/conversation about what ways a poem can be a short story. The teacher will mostly focus on epic poems and narrative poems.
15 min: The teacher will introduce Edgar Allen Poe to the students. The teacher will detail his specific style of writing to the students and assign them one to read.
Homework: To read the Poe poem and find how he uses poetic devices in the poem and what effect they have.
Differentiation: Students who are ELL will have a list made for them with devices and definitions to help them with analyzing the poem.
Assessment: The student’s homework will be the assessment.
Day 7(Tuesday):
5 min: Students work will be collected for Homework points and redistributed to the students.
5 min: Students will discuss their answers with their neighbor
15 min: The class will have a conversation about the poem and how the literary devices were used to create tone and mood in the short story.
20 min: The students will watch videos of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe
15 min:The last part of the class will be a written response about how the videos differ from the written version of the poem because of the visual and sounds.
Assessment: The assessment will be the discussion with the students about the use of the literary devices used in the poem and the written response about the visual they received from the poem through imagery literary devices used and how it differed from what they saw in the video.
Online Sources: The following are different videos to go along with “The Raven” by Edgard Allen Poe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K6-wO94-6I
Days 8-10 (Wednesday-Friday):Fairy Tales and Final Project
Day 8 (Wednesday)
15 min: The students will be introduced to the final project. The teacher will go over the requirements for the projects as well as the rubric for the unit project. The unit project will be a short story. The requirements will involve symbolism, theme, some kind of cultural influence and will have a length requirement. This should be accompanied by some sort of visuals, either handmade on a page, in a book, or online in a slide show.
15 min: Teacher will talk to the students about fairy tales and establish how much the students know about fairy tales. Then using visual aids through slides, the teacher will give a short lecture about the purpose and common features of fairy tales.
30 min: Students will have the remainder of the period to get started working on their unit project.
Homework: Work on Unit Project
Differentiation: Students who are more advanced can create a short film providing they have enough time to go along with their unit projects. EL students will be given the assignment a day earlier, so they have plenty of time to work on it and turn it in by Friday.
Day 9 (Thursday):
10-20 min: Students will be asked to read a short fairy tale that they have not heard of from another culture and write a short paragraph on how it differs from the ones that they know.
30 min: Students will be given time to work on the unit project.
Homework: Finish unit project and have ready to present on Friday
Day 10 (Friday):
60 min: Students will be presenting unit projects
