Are you building a short story unit plan with student choice? I never teach the same short story unit twice. I begin standard English classes with short stories which allows me to encourage student choice and assess student needs. Read on for ways to use short stories in the first nine weeks!
A short story unit allows teachers to build relationships, evaluate students’ needs, and build expectations. Also, I love to have fun with the short stories I teach. Since I teach short stories during the first quarter, I establish that reading and literature offer students more than words. Short stories for secondary students really set a positive classroom atmosphere.
In the past, I’ve presented themes or essential questions that shape our short story unit plan. Common ones include:
- Is war part of human nature?
- Where and how does oppression still exist?
- What influences our beliefs and customs?
- When is acceptable to break rules?
- What definition encompasses “stories” and why do we tell them?
Those are common essential questions that apply to many pieces of literature and of course, you can think of others. From those questions, we can complete a variety of activities to demonstrate understanding. (You can download my free set of literary activities for free.)
Why do short stories lend themselves to student choice?
When students have choice in showing what they learned from the short story, all of the pieces fit together. You’re building relationships with students, they are understanding literature, and you’re meeting standards. Since short stories are, well, short, you can experiment and gauge the interest of individual classes.
Aside from connecting the literature to students’ lives and understanding of the world, I work in the following methods to my short story unit plan. You’ll be able to use these ideas with any short stories for secondary classes.
Student Choice in ELA
Since I teach short stories first, I use that time to establish that student voices matter. I want them to have ownership of the class, and I give them a say in what stories we read. You can make a list of choices and ask students to vote (Google Forms is perfect).
The caveat is that I won’t fill the unit with one type of literature. Students typically do a wonderful job of choosing a variety of authors, but I would never let a class only experience all male authors, for example.
Allowing students a voice in which stories they read greatly contributes to my classroom management and community. Students see that I genuinely care about their interests, and I don’t want to teach a story which they are already familiar.
If you are looking for modern and engaging short stories, I recommend Fresh Ink: An Anthology.
Mentor Sentences Overview
No matter what we read, my students and I analyze the language. We typically do this through mentor sentences. Start with direct instruction with grammar, and then pull sentences from stories and study the language in what we read.
With freshmen, we study the eight parts of speech, and typically I review nouns with freshmen the first week. For example with “The Monkey’s Paw,” I ask students to find proper and common nouns from the story. Then we can review the story from the student-generated list. Other times, I will hand students a sticky note as they walk into class. I’ll direct them to find dynamic verbs from their story. Students are studying grammar, but they are also taking another look at their literature.
Whatever part of speech students need to study, provide focused practice. For middle school students, you might pull sentences and separate subjects and predicates. Doing so is a great way to prep them for sentence structure lessons.
Mentor students allow me to study the eight parts of speech, which I really need my students to understand for vocabulary lessons. Connecting grammar to literature shows students that their language is part of what they read and that grammar is everywhere. It also emphasizes the importance of domain-specific vocabulary.
Overlapping Standards
The start of the school year is the perfect time to tackle standards and implement strong classroom management. I cover public speaking, poetry, grammar, nonfiction, and writing with short stories. Since I strive to create relationships with students at the start of the year, I have built that notion into my lessons. I want each student to feel success those first nine weeks with me. By connecting other curriculum areas to our stories, students can find a passion.
Next, we have fun exploring our new classroom community with a variety of ELA components. As I establish procedures and routines, we can implement those practices in small chunks since short stories are brief. We have plenty of options to practice getting into groups, working with partners, and asking for help. If you plan to use stations throughout the year, practice the routines and procedures associated with stations during this unit.
For instance with the short story “Marigolds,” I teach topic sentences. I narrow paragraph topics for students, and then they write the topic sentence. That assignment is an individual one and connects writing to literature. For a group activity, we study figurative language with task cards. That collaborative work leads to review, preparing students for the quiz.
Engaging Stories for Grammar, Comprehension, Inferences. . .
A great story can stay with a person forever. When offering student choice, you are more likely to reach individual students. Then, the connections you make with other parts of class build a foundation for moving forward.
If you are later teaching a novel, you’ll know if quick and low-pressure multiple choice or discussion questions better gets to the heart of comprehension. Through experimentation, you’ll realize where everyone needs support or review with grammar, and where you can start new concepts.
Basically, use these shorter pieces to experiment and learn what strategies you can carry forth the rest of the school year. A certain class loves task cards? Go for it! Another class loves one-pagers? Find some!
Plus, you’ll see the topics that interest your readers for independent reading and First Chapter Friday.
Graphic Organizers, Task Cards, Interactive Notebook Pieces…
Yep! Students cannot sit and take notes all class period. Part of teaching underclassmen is showing them a variety of ways to learn. I specifically tell them when we use charts or graphic organizers that these are tools for learning—tools they can duplicate in other classes! Not only do students appreciate the movement and choices in learning, I am modeling metacognition.
Plus, some classes really enjoy stations while others tend to perform better with partner work. During our second nine weeks, we read a novel. I can create activities based upon what I learn about their learning styles.
I teach short stories during the first nine weeks of my ELA classes. These reasons provide me with structure and help me build a rapport with students.
What sort of short story unit plan or bundle?
You can find the complete short story unit plan. The short story bundle contains many short stories because I always change with my students’ choices. As we build a community of learners, we also work on literary analysis, sentence structure and more with mentor sentences, writing with topic sentence and elaboration practice, and public speaking.
Basically, since short stories are diverse, the teaching tools can be diverse too! Think of small groups, task cards for a gallery walk, and station rotations to increase comprehension and then inferences.
Every ELA teacher has different short stories for secondary students and methods for engaging those students. If you still need more ideas for the first quarter of ELA, Melissa teaches short stories, too. You can read her ideas for short stories.
Other Short Story Teaching Ideas
Are you getting a general feeling for teaching short stories? I brainstorm and think through different short stories too. You can read more of my ideas with short stories:
Modern Short Stories for High School English
Short Story Lesson Plans
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