Our second short story unit will be a challenge, because everyone is going to be at home, avoiding COVID-19. All materials will be available both in paper and digitally. Students can access them whichever way is easier for them. This iteration of the unit we'll use some more difficult skills: building suspense, dramatic irony, and linking the concept of "showing" details directly to setting and rising action skills practiced during our first short story unit. Just like our first short story unit, the end result will be a completely original, absolutely awesome 3-5 page short story that the students create.

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Given the "at home" nature of this unit, students can work at their own pace. I've purposely made each day's work pretty easy, and all the graphic organizers and structure of the unit are predictable for students because the format is exactly the same as our first short story unit.

Short Stories: Week 1 Planning

This week, students will learn all the skills they'll add into their second short story. While there is some overlap between the skills this unit and last, students will be advancing how they use each skill slightly. The hope is that by studying each of these skills, that when they sit down to write (or type) the story next week, they'll be ready to go with a new tool kit at their side.

Lesson Plans

Monday 3/23/2020: Setting, on the Importance of Specificity
Today, students will learn how to weaponize their settings. Everyone loves starting stories with something like, "it was midnight in a graveyard," which gives us some indication about what will happen, but there are much more effective ways to use setting by interconnecting it to all the other elements of effective literature. Students will look at some examples, non-examples, and they'll brainstorm some ways that they can use setting in their new short story.

Materials
Tuesday 3/24/2020: Suspense through Repetition
If there's one thing missing from student stories, it's suspense, and suspense usually happens one way: purposeful repetition. Whether that repetition is a series of icy turns, waiting for the car to slip off the road, or a series of try out exercises, waiting to see if you make the team, suspense, and manipulating your audience's questions, all comes down to managing just the right amount of purposeful repetition. Today, students will read about purposeful repetition, and look at a series of advice, before creating some examples and non examples of effective suspense through purposeful repetition.
Wednesday 3/25/2020: Revelations in Rising Action
Students tend to simplify rising action into just WHAT happens in the story, without realizing that the rising action can be the vehicle for setting, and characterization, and conflict, and even love. Today, we'll look at how to merge the necessary events that occur during the rising action of a story, with the concept of using "showing" details versus "telling" details.
Thursday 3/26/2020: A Study in Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is awesome. Basically, it's when the audience keeps track of which characters know what, and more importantly, which characters don't know. Today, we'll learn how to build in drama and suspense by manipulating the flow of knowledge between characters and audience. As with all things literary, there are effective and ineffective ways to utilize dramatic irony in a story. Today, we'll learn to use the former, while avoiding the latter.
Friday 3/27/2020: Elements of Literature Scavenger Hunt
As you know, any chance I get, I use authentic, student writing instead of writing by some famous author of yesteryear. Today, students will go on an elements of literature scavenger hunt in a story provided by our very own Michael Brown! So cool. Students will read Michael's first story, and find and explain how all the elements fit together to create an incredibly effective story.

Short Stories Writing Project

Now that we've learned how to produce great writing, and we've refined our story ideas together to ensure well-written short stories, it's time to write! This week will be comprised of structure writing days, with a self-assessment protocol so that both teachers and students can track our progress towards finishing our amazing, short stories by Friday.

Story Description

Students will organize and write a 3-5 page short story that effectively  incorporates multiple elements of literature. They can choose any topic they want, whether it's invading aliens or the thrill of a first kiss. The trick will be to advance the action at a step-by-step pace, and to create amazing, high-quality prose.

Success Skills

Intentionally organize and write a narrative text.
[W8.3a, W8.3b, W8.3c, W8.3d, W8.3e]
Produce and revise clear writing that is free of errors.
[W8.4, W8.5, W8.6]

Story Writing Timeline

Day 1

Monday, 3/30/2020

Day 2-4

Tuesday, 3/31/2020 -
​Thursday, 4/2/2020

Day 5

Friday, 4/3/2020
Today, students will complete their plot structure chart graphic organizer for their second story, remembering to include planned elements of suspense and dramatic irony.
These three days are devoted to writing! I STRONGLY recommend spending about 40 minutes each day writing. You will not be able to write an entire story during home base upon your return in April.
Today, students will self evaluate their stories (only because we're all at home, and there is no way to peer review our stories together.

Story Materials

Plot Structure Chart Graphic Organizer

Download a copy of this plot structure chart (you probably know it as "the witches hat" if you're under fifteen years old) to organize a creative story.  Don't forget, when writing a story, the plot moves forward step by step, not by giant leaps.

Story Assignment Page with Outline

This is an incredibly basic template created mostly for the purposes of creating a Google Classroom assignment. The top of the story page has a few reminders about the skills and expectations of the short story unit, but really, it's an intentionally blank canvas upon which students can paint with words!

Short Story Rubric

To maintain the integrity of our writing grades and data, I created a new version of the NYS 4-point rubric that is more conducive to assessing the quality of a short story. While the point values are the same, and there is still the general expectation that level three is "at grade level" and level four is "above," everything else has been modified to be short-story specific.

Writing Tools Page

The goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools below are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. 
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