Women's History Month Short Story Unit for High School ELA

Whether you're looking for feminist stories, classics or modern short stories, comparative literature or stories by female authors, it's all here in this amazing collection. This is my favorite short story collection for engaging high school students.

Questions for (and links to):

1. "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid
2. “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros
3. "Beau Willie Brown" Excerpted from: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, by Ntozake Shange
4. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman
5. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

These feminist short stories are implanted in my heart. They changed me as a reader personally, and I love sharing them with my students. After 20 years of loving these stories, I still learn new things from my students when we read these as a unit. I also keep them in my arsenal of great materials for stand-alone lessons or to supplement something else we're reading. I’ve also used these for compare/contrast pieces in my larger novel study unit, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

This collection of five feminist short stories includes all materials needed to read and discuss a range of gender issues from some of the best short fiction writers around. You can assign these one at a time, use the whole collection as a short story unit, or select stories to complement your class text. Each assignment includes a link to the story, comprehension questions and in-depth essay and/or discussion questions. Plus, there are end of unit questions for comparing and contrasting all five stories. 

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Included:

• Links to all 5 stories
• Fully editable Google Doc format
• Comprehension questions for each story
• 2-4 essay questions for each story
• Strategies for in-depth written responses
• All rubrics

BONUS:

• 4 End-of-unit essay questions for a compare/contrast literary analysis
• Detailed comparative literary analysis outline
• Rubric for compare/contrast literary analysis