Strategies in Teaching Short Stories

Strategies in Teaching
Short Stories
TAALS ENGL 3212
Table of Contents
01 1. Adaptions
02
7. Liking a character
2. Alternative Ending 8. Make a list
3. Back to the future 9. Map it out
4. Highlighting character 10. Model paragraph assignment
5. Highlighting plot 11. The Nuts and Bolts in Literature
6. How would it be different 12. Perform the story
03 13. Repeated reading

14. Repetition
15. Round table reading
16. Significant Qoutes
17. Surprise Epiphany
18. Tone
Strategies in Teaching Short Stories
01
1. Adaptions
2. Alternative Ending
3. Back to the future
4. Highlighting character
5. Highlighting plot
6. How would it be different
#1. Adaptations
• A useful way to get students to

think about genre specifis is to
ask them to adapt a short story
into a short play.

#2. Alternative Ending
• Have students write an

alternative ending to the story
and explain the critical
difference between their
ending and the author’s.

#3. Back to the future
• obviously important to address the historical

issues and contexts (and clarify which “olden
days” we’re talking about), an interesting
challenge for the students is to ask them to
modernize the story to make it seem relevant to
them today.
• Their changes can include updating the setting
or the use of language, increasing the severity
of the transgression or crisis

#4. Highlighting Character
• Short stories have to establish character quickly,

often in just a few words or sentences.
• Ask students to choose a character from the

story and describe him or her in detail. Then
ask them to identify passages from the text that
support/flesh out their descriptions.

#5. Highlighting Plot
• Plot is also condensed in short stories and, because of its

small scope, it is often easier for students to see and
understand how plot is working in a short story than in a
longer work.
• One way to help them focus on plot specifically is to have

them list characters’ actions and reactions.
• Another way to focus on plot is to ask your students to write

a timeline of the events in the story especially for stories with
nonlinear plots.

#6. How Would This Be Different
If...?
• Student struggle to remember that every word in a
story is a choice; Athena-Like from the authors head.
• A great way to counteract this impulse is to ask

them to consider how the story would be
transformed by changing small things (specific
words of descriptions, minor details) and large
things (point of view, important facts about the
characters, etc.).

02
7. Liking a character
8. Make a list
9. Map it out
10. Model paragraph assignment
11. The Nuts and Bolts in Literature
12. Perform the story
#7. Liking a Character
• In something of a reader-response
method, you can ask your students if the
author wants them to like or dislike a
particular character.
• Then encourage students to provide

textual evidene for what makes the
character likable or unlikable.

Liking a Character
• is called Fictosexuality, Fictoromance,

and Fictophilia are terms that have
recently become pupolar in online
environments as indicators of strong
and lasting feelings of love,
infatuation, or desire for one or more
fictional characters.

Disliking a Character
• Unlikeable Characters are an

important part of the story-world. They
are a foil to kinder, more likeable
characters and help define the scope of
the moral terrain the story sets out.
• “Unlikeable characters demonstrate

some of the following behavior: Lie
and Cheat. Exhibit chauvinistic, sexist,
or racist behavior.

#8. Make a List
• Listing out material objects in the text

is a great way to get your students to
pay attention to detail in the text. Give
them a category of material object
that are significant to the text and ask
them to go through the story and list
all of those objects.

#9. Map it Out
• Anything you can to do help your
students visualize the story more vividly
is good. Asking them do visualize it
literally, by making a map, is really
good, because it helps them order things
like plot events and identify the
significance of setting in a really
concrete way.

#10. Model Paragraph Assignment
• Have students produce a substancial

paragraph interpreting an elements of a
short story. The purpose of this paragraph is
to highlight an implicit critique in the story
and to use evidence to show how the text
makes this critique clear.

#11. The Nuts and Bolts in Literature
• Instruct them to read a story while paying

particular attention to sentence and
paragraph length. Getting them to pay
attention to literature’s most basic
elements, not only gives then something
concrete to begin with in their analysis,
but gets them to start paying attention to
grammar more generally.

#12. Perform the Story
• For stories that rely almost entirely on

the dialogue and actions of the
characters to convey meaning, rather
than exposition you might have your
students perform the literature.

03
13. Repeated reading
14. Repetition
15. Round table reading
16. Significant Qoutes
17. Surprise Epiphany
18. Tone
#13. Repeated Readings
• Have students read s story four times at home

and chart their understanding and enjoyment of
the text with each reading.
• Then, during the class time, ask them to meet in

small group and give short presentations about
their experiences with each reading and then to
summarize their discussions to the larger
group......

#14. Repetition
• Another way to reinforce authorial choice and

to teach students to be a aware of how an
author might be focusing their attentions in
very specific ways, is to attend to repetitions in
a short story. Ask your students to truck
repeated words, phrases, or images in a story.

#15. Round Table Reading
• For short stories, you might have students to read

the story aloud and ask them to comment on the
variations. They have never failed to make
excellent observations, which of course gives
opportunity to applaud their ability to read and
encourage them that they can do this with
everything they read.

#16. Significant Qoutes
• Ask student to bring in passages or quotes that deserve

attention in discussion. They should have reasons why
the quotes is important and what it might bring in the
same quote and this is a great opportunity for discussing
notions, of individual readers responses vs. inherently
poignant moments in the text.

#17. Surprise Epiphany
• Short stories often contain some kind of revelations or

significant turning point in a character’s though and or
actions. This moment of realizations is a major defining
attribute of the short story genre.
• Although students will be familiar with the idea, they

may be unfamiliar with the term, so take some time to
define what an epiphany is and how it works in literature.

#18. Tone
• As with poetry, tone is particularly tricky elements of

literature for our students to understand. to help
students arrive at a definitions of a story’s tone more
organically that just asking what mood the story creates
or what emotions it draws out, as them to come up with
a list of things they might associate with a short story,
however vaguely.

Our team
Mailyn Sheryl Dove

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Strategies in Teaching

03 13. Repeated reading

• A useful way to get students to

• Have students write an