Reading in the Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools, Spring, 2010

Strategy: Parody of an Author
Smagorinsky, Peter. (2008). Teaching english by design. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Students will need the texts “The Most Dangerous Game,” by Richard Connell.
In this lesson plan, students will first examine the author’s style, themes, and language characteristics. They will learn what a parody is and relate it to common media today. Students then will create their own parody based on the work they are reading. I will use this strategy but with a slight modification.
5.01 Read and analyze various literary works by:
• using effective reading strategies for preparation, engagement, reflection.
• recognizing and analyzing the characteristics of literary genres, including fiction (e.g., myths, legends, short stories, novels), nonfiction (e.g., essays, biographies, autobiographies, historical documents), poetry (e.g., epics, sonnets, lyric poetry, ballads) and drama (e.g., tragedy, comedy).
• interpreting literary devices such as allusion, symbolism, figurative language, flashback, dramatic irony, dialogue, diction, and imagery.
• understanding the importance of tone, mood, diction, and style.
• 5.03 Demonstrate the ability to read, listen to and view a variety of increasingly complex print and non-print literacy texts appropriate to grade level and course literary focus, by: identifying and analyzing text components (such as organizational structures, story elements, organizational features) and evaluating their impact on the text.
• providing textual evidence to support understanding of and reader's response to text.
• demonstrating comprehension of main idea and supporting details.
• summarizing key events and/or points from text.
• making inferences, predicting, and drawing conclusions based on text.
• identifying and analyzing personal, social, historical or cultural influences, contexts, or biases.
I will first say to my students that they need to pull out the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.” We will review over the story that they should have read the night before. After reviewing and a quick discussion of the work, students will learn what a parody is and examine the author’s tone and style in the story. I will then ask my students to break into groups of four or five and construct a news paper that is a parody of Connell’s work. Each group will be assigned a specific section of the newspaper, such as: top stories, obituaries, announcements, and ads. Students then will design and develop their particular section making fun of the actual story. Students will work on this for the remainder of the class. I will tell my students to finish up any remaining parts for homework. Students will present their work the next day to the class and I will put the newspaper together and display it in class.