Short Story Unit Plan - Presentations, Assignments, and Activities for 4 Stories

Short Story Unit Plan - Presentations, Assignments, and Activities for 4 Stories: This comprehensive middle school and high school short story unit will captivate your students with four highly engaging stories, all with surprising endings. The resource includes eye-catching PowerPoint presentations to introduce short story terms and to guide the lesson for each of the short stories, dynamic discussions, enriching videos, and creative assessments and activities to engage and challenge your students. The carefully curated stories and eye-catching and rigorous lessons and materials multimedia elements make for a well-rounded unit that enhances critical thinking and literary analysis skills. Also included are final essay topics and resources for students to show their analysis of the stories.

What Teachers Are Saying About This Short Story Unit Plan:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ By far one of my best TPT purchases. Use again every year and always look forward to seeing students' reactions to the stories! Especially when they write their own creepy short stories!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Presto you did it again. Another great resource. I used it in a variety of year levels with great success. Super well presented and works well every time. Thanks!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Amazing Unit!! Contains all the PowerPoints, comprehension questions and engaging activities! The stories are so intriguing as well!

Included in This Short Story Unit Plan:

➡️ Introduction to Short Stories: Use this lesson, note-taking assignment, and review game to introduce students to short stories and review the most important story elements and literary terms they will need to know before beginning the unit. The presentation introduces students to the plot diagram, conflict types, atmosphere, tone, points of view, foreshadowing, irony, setting, and theme. A fill-in-the-blank note-taking page is provided for students to complete as they follow along with the presentation. Also included is an interactive review game called "Who Wants to be a Literary Terms Expert." There is also a detailed lesson and a quiz to check student understanding!

➡️ The Lottery by Shirley Jackson: Use this highly engaging story to teach students about the danger of blindly following traditions or historically held beliefs. The lesson includes the following:

• A PowerPoint presentation that guides you through all elements of the lesson.
• The Lottery Reading Analysis Questions: Help students examine the short story more deeply with this ready-to-print assignment that has them answer questions on foreshadowing, symbolism, tension, suspense, irony, and more! A detailed answer key is provided.
• The Lottery Symbolism Assignment: Allow your students to explore various symbols in this short story and explain their meaning. Students will consider the symbolic meaning behind names of characters (Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves, etc.) as well as the lottery box, stones, and pieces of paper. A detailed answer key is provided
• The Lottery Video Short Story Comparison: After students watch the short film adaptation of The Lottery, have them compare the two by finding 5 differences between the video and short story version!
• Exploring Traditions Project: The Lottery focuses on strange traditions, so have your students explore traditions in their own family, community, or country with this multimedia project. Students will examine a tradition of their choice and do some research to discover its origins and significance. Then, they will decide if this is a tradition that you believe should be continued or not and justify their response. They will share their findings in blog, podcast, or presentation format.
• The Lottery Final Newspaper Project: Encourage your students' creativity with this creative project where they must imagine they are a journalist living in the town where the lottery takes place. They will publish a newspaper with a headline article, obituary, special interview, and a letter to the editor by integrating as much information from the text as possible.

➡️ Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl: Use this surprising story to teach students about dramatic irony and characterization. The lesson includes the following:

• PowerPoint Presentation: This 26-slide PowerPoint presentation to guide you through the lesson includes discussion questions, author biographical information, a link to the video clip version of the story, answers to questions for whole class review, a plot diagram assignment, notes on literary devices such as dramatic irony, a police report activity and more!
• Reading Questions: Help students examine the short story more deeply with this ready-to-print assignment that has them answer questions. Students are required to use text evidence in their answers. A detailed answer key is provided
• Plot Diagram Activity: Students will complete a fun and hands-on sorting activity based on the different parts of the plot diagram.
• Mrs. Maloney's Secret Diary Creative Writing Activity: Students will write three diary entries from Mrs. Maloney's perspective in the story to show characterization at different moments in the plot.
• Police Investigation Report Activity: Students will pretend to file a police report against Mrs. Maloney and use content from the story to complete the report.
• Short Story Vs. Video Comparison Activity: Students will compare a video interpretation of the story to the written short story.

➡️ The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe: Teach Poe's most famous short story with the following resources:

• The Tell-Tale Heart PowerPoint Presentation: This 25-slide PowerPoint presentation to guide you as the teacher through the lessons includes author biographical information, information on the genre of Gothic Fiction, pre and post-reading discussion questions, literary device notes, a creative writing activity, link to a video interpretation and more. You'll never be looking for things to do with your class for this story when you use this resource!
• Full-Text of Story: Share this full text with students to read.
• Figurative Language Activity: Students will match examples from the story with the correct term as well as find their own examples. An answer key is included.
• Tell-Tale Heart Vocabulary Mystery Word Activity: Students will play a game to help them become more familiar with challenging words in the story.
• Tell-Tale Heart Comprehension Questions: Use these questions to assess student understanding of the story. An answer key is included.
• Prequel Or Sequel Writing Creative Writing: This assignment allows students to be creative in adding their own new plot elements to the story.
• The Tell-Tale Heart Police Report Activity: Students will write a report from one of the officers' perspectives in the story using plot elements.

➡️ The Chaser by John Collier: Use this story to help your students practice the skill of inferencing. Included in this short story lesson:

• The Chaser PowerPoint presentation: This 16-slide PowerPoint presentation will easily guide you through the lesson with discussion questions, assignment prompts, and answer keys. Everything is laid out for you from beginning to end!
• The Chaser Short Story Inference Assignment: Have your students demonstrate their understanding of Collier's short story and use their inference skills with this assignment that has students examine quotes from the novel and share their inferences and predictions. A sample answer key is provided!
• Dear Abby Advice Column Assignment: This writing assignment allows the student to advise the main character, which not only has students practice their writing, but also show knowledge of characterization.

➡️ Essay Writing Resources: End your unit by having students complete a 5 paragraph literary analysis essay based on the short stories. Included are essay topics for students, graphic organizers and checklists for pre and post-writing, and an MLA style guide student handbook.

Pair this with our short story assignments

>>> Assignments for Any Novel or Short Story

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Please note that the full text of most of the short stories are not included for copyright reasons, but can easily be found by searching the title and author online. If you need support finding a story, you can email us at prestoplans@gmail.com.