The Gift of the Magi Short Story Unit for Middle School for 7th and 8th

This short story unit: "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry is exactly what you need to teach your seventh or eighth grade middle school learners in an engaging Socratic Seminar, discussion-based, and reading response focused format with this classic fiction text.

This free short story unit was created so that teachers could try out the Socratic Seminar and reading response format that I use in all my reading units and short story units.

Other Middle School Short Story Units Available:

1. "The Gift of the Magi"
2. "All Summer in a Day"
3. "Thank You Ma'am"
4. "Cinderella" Coming 2022-2023
5. "Examination Day" Coming 2022-2023
6. "The Monkey's Paw" Coming 2022-2023
7. "Peter Pan: When Wendy Grew Up" Coming 2022-2023
8. "Lamb to the Slaughter" Coming 2022-2023

Five Irony Focused Lessons:

1. Lesson 1: Pre-Lesson Set-Up and Class norms for Socratic Seminar
2. Lesson 2: Irony Interactive Notebook Lesson
3. Lesson 3: Irony Reading Response and Socratic Seminar Lesson
4. Lesson 4: Inspiration from Religious Works:
5. Lesson 5: Comparing Text to Multimedia Version of "The Gift of the Magi"

Components Included in Each Lesson:

• Common Core Standard Alignment
• Comprehension questions, guiding/interpretive questions for the Socratic Seminar
• Teacher suggested answers for comprehension questions
• Teacher suggested vocabulary words
• Learning Period
• Closing
• PowerPoint and PDF Display slides for all Guiding and Interpretive Questions (JPEG images included to upload to Google Slides as well)
• Lesson plans and the Common Core standard alignments are their own file so teachers can easily and quickly access the novel lessons.

Included in a Separate File for Teachers:

• The Socratic Seminar: research base and strategy in practice
• Using this resource in your classroom
• Different reading workshop set-ups
• Scripted lesson examples
• Reading response notebook examples from my classroom

What Files are Included:

1. "The Gift of the Magi" 3 Lesson Reading Unit (teacher suggested answers and vocabulary now included)
2. 40+ page Implementation Teachers Guide: Socratic Seminar, Tips and Tricks, Pacing, Student Examples, FAQs, scripted lesson examples, etc.
3. PowerPoint and PDF Display slides for all Guiding and Interpretive Questions (JPEG images included to upload to Google Slides as well)
4. Digital Student Reading Response Notebooks
5. Editable PowerPoint Reading Response Rubrics
6. Editable Google Slides Reading Response Rubrics
7. Small group and individual conference teacher forms

This unit is exactly what you need to teach your 7th and 8th grade learners in a fun and engaging format with the classic short story, "The Gift of the Magi."

How are these short story units different?

• This unit digs deep into multiple common core reading literature and main writing standards.
• The backbone of these units is The Socratic Seminar, which pushes students to have discussions with their peers, about the novels (by using the guiding and interpretive questions provided) while using text-based evidence and critical thinking.
• Their thinking and discussion build a strong foundation of understanding for their reading responses (which will blow you away because of how much they grow throughout the year).