Creating A Gothic Short Story

"Enter freely and at your own will"- Dracula

By the end of the week, the students will read, dissect and write their own gothic short story.

Monday: The students will refer to certain sections of the short story and have a class discussion.

Tuesday: The students will identify the elements of a gothic short story and start to brainstorm for their topic.

Wednesday: The students will have the class period to describe character traits, setting, plot, challenges, rising and falling action, gothic themes and the ending.

Thursday: The students will have to the end of class to turn in a rough draft outline of their story.

Friday: The students will have until the end of class to turn in a full rough draft for review.

Monday: The will have read a short gothic story called Lungewater by Joan Aiken over the weekend so they should be well rehearsed with it. There will be a text with underlined sections of the story that are important and should be discussed in Socratic seminar format. One circle will be on the outside and one on the inside; people in the inside circle will have an open discussion mainly on their own without the teacher’s help. The people on the outside should be talking notes and responding on their thoughts on paper which should be handed in at the end of class. There will also be a hot seat if anyone from the outside wants to jump in the conversation.

Tuesday: The students will be provided with a power point on gothic literature. They will have to take notes and then have a small discussion of what elements were present in the short story. Then the students will use the notes they took from the slides as a guide for their gothic story. Each student should have at least have a half a page of ideas for their short story; it doesn’t have to be set in stone but there has to an idea written. The students will also be provided with the rubric for the project.

Wednesday: The students will use the rubric as a guide for what should be included in the story. They will have half the class period to pick an idea they brainstormed from the previous day and identify the plot, character traits, setting, challenges, rising and falling action, gothic themes and ending. After that, they will spend the other half of class sharing their ideas and if they are having trouble with their short story they can get advice/help from the other students. By the end of class everyone should have an established idea of their topic. For homework, the students should start writing their story.

Thursday: The students will have the whole class period to write a rough draft and turn it by the end of class by sharing it with me through GoogleDocs. If the students have any questions, they can seek my help or another student.

Friday: The students have to have a full rough draft, from beginning to end, and hand it in by the end of class through GoogleDocs. The students will receive a grade for the rough draft over the weekend. The students will have until Tuesday of next week to hand their final draft of their story.

As stated previously under the task section, the students will be graded on class discussions (Socratic seminar), the brainstorming ideas, the story outline, the rough draft, the final draft and class participation.

Gothic Short Story Rubric

The link to the full rubric is in RED below. Please read through it carefully and if you have any questions feel free to ask.

https://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=NX57A29&nocache=1459711925109