This document outlines the course description, requirements, goals, and units for a one semester elective short stories course at Canistota High School. The course will focus on reading, discussing, and writing various types of short stories through exercises, drafts, and peer reviews. Students will analyze elements of short stories like theme, plot structure, and dialogue. The goals are for students to improve their comprehension, evaluation, revision, and editing skills according to state reading and writing standards. Evaluation will include daily work, writing assignments, quizzes, and tests focused on story components and writing skills.

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SHORT STORIES Benjamin M. Barondeau
Canistota High School English Room
Spring 2011 (one semester) E-mail: Benjamin.Barondeau
Period 6: 1:46-2:36 MTWRF @k12.sd.us
TEXTS
Foote, David W., Margaret Grauff Forst, Mary Hynes-Berry, Julie West Johnson, Basia C.
Miller, and Brenda Pierce Perkins. Contemporary Short Stories. Evanston, IL:
McDougal, Littell, 1993.
Foster, Thomas E. How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to
Reading between the Lines. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Short Stories is available as a semester elective offered during sixth period. A variety of short
fiction is read and written with an emphasis on literary terms and authors.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Students will read a variety of short stories, including, but not limited to, stories in the course
text, Contemporary Short Stories. Possible short story types will include flash fiction, coming-
of-age fiction, dialogues, fantasy fiction, magical realism, science fiction, and solitude/retreat
narratives. After reading, discussing, and evaluating short story exemplars, students will
compose their own short stories according to the elements of the assigned exemplars. Students
will submit at least two typed drafts of each story (an initial or “first” draft and a polished,
revised, and “final” draft). For the first draft, students will exchange papers and peer-review
another student’s story, filling out a worksheet with questions that identify the story’s strengths
and areas that need revision (focusing on quality of content, clarity of form, and clarity of style),
as well as proofreading the story’s typescript using the appropriate revision symbols. Students
will also compose timed free-writes and introductory paragraph exercises that focus on theme,
content/idea, dialogue, and narrative techniques.
COURSE GOALS AND OUTCOMES
This course seeks to help students improve their abilities to comprehend and evaluate text, as
well as their abilities to revise and edit their own documents. These objectives accord with, and
thus, satisfy the following March 2007 South Dakota Twelfth Grade Reading and Writing
Standards:
Twelfth Grade Reading Standards
12.R.2.1 Students can evaluate how style affects the meaning of text.
12.R.2.2 Students can read fluently to comprehend grade-level text.

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12.R.3.1 Students can evaluate text for the author’s style.
12.R.4.1 Students can evaluate the depiction of human experience in literary works from diverse
cultures, locations, and time periods.
Twelfth Grade Writing Standards
12.W.1.3 Students can revise a document for ideas, organization, diction, fluency, voice, and
presentation.
12.W.2.1 Students can edit a document for all conventions.
INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS
To successfully complete the coursework for Short Stories, students will devote class time to 1)
discussing and evaluating the reading assignments; 2) discussing the elements of a good short
story and the elements of different kinds of short stories, as well as literary terms and literary
techniques, including the use of dialogue, diction, narrative point of view, and introductory
paragraphs; 3) free writing, drafting, peer-reviewing, editing, and revising short stories; and 4)
timed free writing exercises.
EVALUATION
The instructor will evaluate students using daily work, writing assignments, quizzes, and tests.
The daily work and writing assignments will be a variety of written exercises that emphasize the
use of the various components of writing and reinforce the importance of those skills.
COURSE UNITS
I. Orson Scott Card’s Elements of a Good Story: MICE (Milieu, Idea, Character, Event)
II. Literary terms: irony, theme, mood, setting, symbol, characterization, point of view, plot
structure, dialogue
III. First-, Second-, and Third-person Point of View
IV. Use of Violence in Literature
V. Flash Fiction
VI. Rough Outlining, Plotting, Prewriting, Free Writing, and “Zero Drafts” (Extended Free
Writing)
VII. Use of Dialogue
VIII. Introductory Paragraphs
IX. Coming-of-age Story
X. Dialogue Story
XI. Fantasy and Magical Realism
XII. Solitude and Retreat Narratives
XIII. Science Fiction