Lesson 7

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner, Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1930
  • “The Far and the Near,” Thomas Wolfe, Scribner, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1935
  • “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948

Materials

Tools

• Telling Stories: Section 2 Diagnostic Checklist

• Mentor Sentence Journal

• Vocabulary Journal

Editable Google Docs

• Telling Stories: Section 2 Diagnostic Checklist

• Mentor Sentence Journal

• Vocabulary Journal

Activity 1: Discuss

We will discuss with a partner our thinking about which story we will rewrite from a different point of view for the Section Diagnostic.

With a partner, discuss the short story that you have decided to rewrite. Identify the story, explain why you have chosen it, discuss the part of the story you will rewrite (all of the story or a section of it), and share ideas about how a central character might view and retell the events of the story.

Present constructive feedback to your partner about how to model the rewriting of the story after the original author’s style, while also shifting the point of view from third to first person.

Activity 2: Listen – Discuss – Write

We will follow along as our teacher models how to rewrite a section of a story from a different point of view.

Step 1

As a class, review and discuss the concept of a story’s narrative point of view—the perspective from which it is told. Think about the differences between stories that are told in the third person (‘he," "she," "they")—often by a narrator who is removed from the story—and those told in the first person ("I")—by a narrator who is a central character. Review the three stories you have read in this section of the unit, all of which are told primarily from a third-person point of view (though the narrator in "A Rose for Emily" is apparently a member of the town viewing and telling the story from some distance).

Follow along as your teacher models how someone might rewrite a section of one of the three stories. For example, how would the second paragraph of "The Far and the Near" change if the story were being told from the point of view of the small child clinging to her mother’s skirt?

Listen and follow along as your teacher or one of your peers rereads aloud Paragraph 2, beginning with "Every day, a few minutes after two o’clock in the afternoon."

As a class, make a list of what will be narrated and described from the paragraph.

Discuss how a young girl, who lived with her mother in the "tidy little cottage of whiteboards, trimmed vividly with green blinds" might view the daily arrival of the train.

1. How would she see and describe the details presented by Wolfe in the paragraph (which is written in third person but which reflects how the engineer might see the scene)?

2. What words might she use to describe the train’s movement past her house?

Step 2

Following this discussion, rewrite part or all of the paragraph, using Wolfe’s organization and trying to emulate his writing, but now telling the story from the first-person point of view ("I") of the young girl.

Activity 3: Discuss – Write

We will discuss with a partner our thinking about which parts of the story we will rewrite from a different point of view for the Section Diagnostic. We will then work on a first draft of our story rewrite.

Determine which part of the story you will rewrite, and make a list of the details, plot events, characters, and dialogue you will need to address from the point of view of Tessie Hutchinson, Emily Grierson, or one of the women from "The Far and the Near."

Think about how the character might view and describe these details of the story, and how that might be similar to or different from how the third-person narrator of the story has presented things.

Begin by rewriting a few sentences or a short paragraph from the story to practice how to retell it.

With a partner, read aloud the section you have rewritten and discuss what works and what might be improved.

Use the rest of class time to continue rewriting the parts of the story you have selected to address in your narrative.

Activity 4: Write

For homework, we will finish drafting our rewrites of a story from a new first-person point of view, in preparation for presenting our stories for the Section Diagnostic.

For homework, finish rewriting your selected story from a new first-person point of view so that you are prepared to polish and present your story in the next lesson for the Section Diagnostic.