The following lesson takes a 90 minute class to teach depending on the discussion you and your kids put forth. You can, of course, break it up as you see fit.
We started the class by reading Shirley Jackson's "Charles". If you've never read it, you find a copy here. It's a good break from the stories involving tragedy or death. I like to have the kids read it in parts (narrator 1, narrator 2, Laurie, Mother, Father, Teacher) since we typically do a lot of individual reading activities.
The story itself is short and fun and is a good way to teach situational irony and foreshadowing. After we discuss these terms and we look at the clues we were given that give away the surprise ending (this is a good chance for those who figured it early to look smart by pointing out what it was that led them to see the truth). At this point, many of the students are wandering how they missed it on the first reading. That's when we tackle how Jackson pulls this off - with narration.
The mother is out narrator here and her view of her son contradicts elements in the story, but, being a mom, she gladly puts the blinders on and sees the best of her child and quickly dismisses any character flaws as being the result of this Charles kid. Since she so willingly buys into it and since we have no reason to believe she is an unreliable narrator (and even more so since she does not believe herself to be one), we easily buy into her worldview. Since she believes her child whole heartedly, we are forgiven if we miss that this kids is an intentionally unreliable narrator when retelling the events of each day to his parents. Sure we have situational irony and foreshadowing, by the master writer here uses narration to deliver both of these in this story.
Now that they have an appreciation for Jackson, we jump in on her more famous work - "The Lottery". At this point the students have some knowledge of our author, so may be looking for the ironic twist and try to figure it out. I give them no warning about the story (other than it is a story that could have gotten me fired on my first year of teaching, but that is a story for a different blog post perhaps). Since I want to do all of this in a day, I go with the old movie version (takes about 18 minutes):
The first round of discussion goes to what the point of the story is and it is rare that we get a student who off the bat realizes that this is about questioning why we do things. If you want to hint to your students to help them find the answer, it lies in anything Old Man Warner (my hero) says. After there has been some discussion on that front, we talk about the background here. It was written in 1948, so people were not as open to change then as we are now. That started with the '60s and progressed with the changing technology, but even now students can relate to groups that do not wish to let go of traditions they hold dear. We talk about all the negative letters it got after being printed in the New Yorker and some of the disturbing reactions (people wanting to know where this took place so that they could go watch it).
Once that is out of the way, we go for how she did it. What technique is present here. The answer, for me at least, is tone. The first half of this movie has a lighthearted tone. everyone is joking and catching up, the kids are playing, no worries in the world. Once Old Man Warner speaks (my hero!), the tone gets more serious and increasingly gets more serious making any joke or light hearted statement seem more and more out of place. Even though we were looking for the ironic twist, we are so thrown off by this shift in tone that it amplifies the results.
After this discussion, we move to a book she is known for - The Haunting of Hill House. Since this is a one day lesson, we don't have time to jump into the novel, but I do reel them in with this clip from the Netflix series by the same name (I know the two are very different in may ways, but the series does try to bring in the psychological horror like the book does - the ghosts react to the personal trauma the people bring to the house). It's not too scary and no jump scares.
By the way, earlier in this episode, the boy found a hat in the house and brought it to his room, which you can see in this clip in the shadows.
Now that the students are looking for how the scene is developed, I usually have someone point out that the tension in this scene is the pacing. The scene moves so slow and it is this that really drives the students to hold their breath like the boy in the clip.
It is almost time for the bell to ring, so we wrap it up by reminding how narration impacts the story in "Charles", tone impacts the story in "The Lottery", and pacing impacts the story in The Haunting of Hill House and they are given a challenge to start looking at how the authors achieve their greatness, not just what is the greatness achieved.
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