Short Stories

Objectives:
Identifying horror, romance, suspense, mystery, comedy and drama in literature.
Comprehending and analyzing short stories.
Creating a genre specific short story.
Performing, video-taping and editing the story.

Equipment:
Computers with Internet connection and movie software, flip cameras

Body:
1. Introduce students to the different genres of literature. Have them research genres and sub-genres of literature on the Internet to present new and/or unfamiliar genres to the class.
2. Have each student sign up for wikispaces or another blog discussion board.
3. Assign short stories of various genres from on-line banks such as eastoftheweb.com. Include horror (Dracula's Guest), Suspense (An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge), Romance (Mr. and Mrs. Dove), Drama (Death by Scrabble), and Mystery (The Case of Lady Sannox).
4. Have the students discuss the stories on an on-line discussion board. Teacher should lead discussion with questions about plot, literary elements, etc. Give the student two weeks to read the stories and participate in the discussion.
5. Test students on the short stories and genres.
6. Put students in cooperative learning groups and have them select a genre.
7. Give the students five days to brainstorm, draft, revise, and rewrite a script that performed would take at least 10 minutes. Provide them with a rubric for grading purposes.
8. Review the script and have students video-tape a short film using their flip camera.
9. Have the students upload and edit their film.
10. Present the films to the class.

Assessments:
Research, Discussion board, test, movie