This recurring lesson encourages students to comprehend their reading through inquiry and collaboration. They choose important quotations from the text and work in groups to formulate "quiz" questions that their peers will answer.

In this lesson, students will learn how to analyze and decipher crucial details in the short story “The Women” by Tom Barbash in response to questions put forth to them in their writing prompt. This exercise will help to strengthen their critical thinking and reading comprehension skills, while their writing skills will be challenged through a response to a writing prompt resulting in a formal essay. The lesson will also ask students to recall and integrate ideas from an earlier reading entitled “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn.

The short story "The Cask of Amontillado," by Edgar Allan Poe is an effective venue for teaching English I literary terms. The following lesson plan is designed to engage the reader in a deeper than superficial reading of the text. It is also designed to elicit discussion and written critical-thinking responses. This lesson assumes that the literary terms have already been introduced. However, if they have not, the teacher may use this lesson to introduce these terms in the context of the literature.

Syllabus for ENG-243 Introduction to the Short Story class taught by Dr. Suzanne O'Brien during the Fall 2016 Semester.

This is a short collection, which features the work of students in Dr. Mark Kinney's course, ICST 471, ANTH 470, SOCI 493: Enculturation and Spiritual  Development Across Cultures, taught at Evangel University, 2022-2023. The course has used the open textbook Discovering Cultural Anthropology by Antonia M. Santangelo. 

Thank you for visiting our Tennessee Board of Regents OER Grant English 1020: Introduction to Literature course. The pilot launched in spring 2023. This Walters State Community College composition course focuses on reading and analyzing poetry, drama, and short stories. The course has been designed with Quality Matters standards, Universal Design for Learning concepts, Growth Mindset fundamentals, and Lumen Circles concepts.     

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will explore great works of American literature and consider how writers reflect the time period in which they write. They will write two literary analysis papers and also work in groups to research and develop anthologies of excellent American stories.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and analyze stories from several 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century American authors. After researching a time period, they select stories from that period to create an anthology. The readings enhance their understanding of the short story, increase their exposure to well-known American authors, and allow them to examine the influence of social, cultural, and political context.
Students examine elements of short stories and have an opportunity for close reading of several American short stories. During these close readings, they examine the ways that short story writers attempt to explore the greater truths of the American experience through their literature.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

If you were to write a short story about this decade, what issues might you focus on?
What defines a short story? Just length?
To what extent do these stories reflect the era or decade in which they were written?
To what extent are the themes they address universal?

CLASSROOM FILMS

History.com has short videos on the Vietnam War (“Vietnam” and “A Soldier's Story”).

In this lesson, students will explore dialogue and speech. They'll work with each other to understand the significance of the language and diction we use and consider how we are judged by the way we speak.

In this lesson, students will define terms related to plot and will “map” the plots of familiar stories. Using “The Tell-Tale Heart” again, they will discuss how writers build and develop plot in their stories.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's theory on the “single effect” of the short story. They will read a passage from Poe as well as his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

In this lesson, students will begin to learn about the American short story. They will have an opportunity to practice close reading, and they'll explore the qualities of the short story genre through Quick Writes and discussion.

'The Genre of Short Story ' is basically an analysis of the basic elements of the short story form.The structural elements as well as the style,specially the point of view and narrative technique used in the short story are explained with illustrations from stories of different culture and countries.The analysis runs in three parts:unit I- Introduction and structural elements,unit 2 -Illustrations and explanation of structure,unit 3-illustration and explanation of the style- the point of view and narrative technique.

This unit is to explore the influence of an author's life on his or her work through the analysis of American Short Stories.

This course studies representative twentieth and twenty-first-century texts and films from Hispanic America and Spain. Emphasis is on developing strategies for analyzing the genres of the novel, the short story, the poem, the fictional film, and the theatrical script. The novels read this semester are Magali García Ramis’s Felices días, Tío Sergio (1986, Puerto Rico) and Javier Cercas’s Soldados de Salamina (2001, Spain). We will study Lorca’s play “La casa de Bernarda Alba” (1936, Spain), films from Spain, México, and Cuba, poems by Darío (Nicaragua), Machado (Spain), Lorca (Spain), Hernández (Spain), Vallejo (Perú), Cernuda (Spain), and Luis Palés Matos (Puerto Rico), and short stories from México (by an exiled Spanish writer), Chile, Argentina, and Cuba. Thematic emphasis is on the Spanish Civil War, changing attitudes toward gender, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and the history of race in the Americas.

This open-access anthology features short texts that can be read in a single class period and are designed to spark deep conversations. Organized around themes of being, love, land, world, and futures, these poems, essays, and flash fiction offer inclusive and affirming perspectives to align with junior high and high school English language arts (ELA) curriculum. With contributions from acclaimed young adult authors, flash fiction writers, and teacher-poets, Just YA provides educators with contemporary texts that resonate with and inspire today’s students to write their own stories.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's theory on the “single effect” of the short story. They will read a passage from Poe as well as his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”Students will annotate the text to look for how the author uses Gothic elements to set a mood in the environment (the "single effect") and the changes or effects it has on the main character (the focus on the individual Poe is known for).

Reading Fiction is designed to sharpen your skills as a critical reader. As we explore both short stories and novels focusing on the theme of “the city in literature,” we will learn about the various elements that shape the way we read texts - structure, narrative voice, character development, novelistic experimentation, historical and political contexts and reader response.

Whether freshmen or AP seniors, students often forget to back up their statements about texts with evidence for support or to begin with the text when considering answers to literary questions.  The more we ask them to provide textual evidence in discussion, analysis activities, essays, and on tests, the more ingrained this important skill will become.  This lesson was designed for freshmen at the beginning of the year as they begin analyzing literature.  The handout and question refer specifically to the story "Poison" by Roald Dahl, but feel free to remix the lesson to work with another text, older students or nonfiction.