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The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs Short Story Unit

Teach symbolism, foreshadowing, theme, and the author’s craft through W.W. Jacobs’ eerie classic The Monkey’s Paw with an engaging, discussion-based approach designed to spark critical thinking and meaningful connections in your 6th–8th grade classrooms. This unit equips you with everything you need to guide students through rich Socratic Seminar discussions, deep reading responses, and multimedia comparisons that highlight how authors create suspense and meaning.
 
 

This short story unit is the perfect introduction to my Socratic Seminar and reading response structure, which I use across all my literature units. It provides a hands-on experience to boost engagement and comprehension while encouraging students to think critically about fate, human desire, and the consequences of our choices.

What’s Included:

  • 6-Lesson Reading & Analysis Unit: Complete with teacher answer keys, vocabulary, guiding/interpretive questions, and differentiated rubrics.
  • 40+ Page Teacher Implementation Guide: Featuring pacing suggestions, Socratic Seminar tips, student examples, and scripted lesson notes.
  • Comprehension & Discussion Questions: For checks and deeper interpretive thinking—available in PowerPoint, PDF, and JPEG formats for easy classroom use.
  • Digital Student Response Notebooks: Fully editable, ready-to-use pages to support student thinking.
  • Editable Rubrics & Conference Tools: Available in PowerPoint and Google Slides to differentiate for diverse classrooms.
  • Self-Grading Digital Assessment: A Google Form quiz to measure student mastery.

Six Core Lessons:

  1. Pre-Lesson Setup: Establish Socratic Seminar norms.
  2. Author’s Craft (Part 1): Introduce literary devices like imagery, tone, and symbolism.
  3. Author’s Craft (Part 2): Explore foreshadowing, suspense, and narrative style.
  4. Symbolism: Analyze recurring images and their deeper meaning.
  5. Foreshadowing: Trace how Jacobs builds suspense through hints and clues.
  6. Multimedia & Summary Writing: Compare text to film adaptations and practice objective summary writing.

Why You’ll Love This Unit:

This isn’t just a short story lesson—it’s a launchpad for teaching your students to analyze, discuss, and respond thoughtfully to literature. Through Socratic Seminars, students build confidence, think critically, and construct evidence-based responses. The chilling suspense of The Monkey’s Paw makes it a perfect text to hook even reluctant readers while covering essential standards in literature and writing.

How This Unit Stands Out:

Unlike other short story units, this resource dives deep into Common Core standards while giving you flexible tools to adapt for your classroom needs. With structured lessons, built-in discussion supports, and digital/print options, you’ll have everything you need to lead meaningful analysis—without hours of prep.

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