Edgar+Allan+Poe



TEXTS AND AUDIO 1. The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore This site is supported by the EAP Society. It includes links to all of Poe's published works in full text. It also includes a biography of him, a number of articles and lectures regarding his work, information on dark romanticism, and information on the society itself. This site is a great resource for the literature, especially if the text you want to teach is not included in students' anthologies or is unavailable through the library.

2. Audio files This site has free audio downloads of readings of "The Pit and the Pendulum," "A Dream Within a Dream," "El Dorado," "Alone," and "Annabel Lee." There are also links to a page that allows readers to read along while audio of the text is played.

3. Graphic Novel Graphic novels of EAP's stories and poems have been created and are available for use with struggling readers, comic book junkies, or as an alternative to plain text reading. Maybe you could get two birds with one stone and cover graphic novels as a genre at the same time.

ACTIVITIES 1. Poe Calendar Activity "The Raven" was published on January 29, 1845. This activity is designed for grades 7-12. Students are asked to listen to the language and respond while a few stanzas are read aloud. This activity could be expanded by handing out copies of "The Raven" and instructing students to read on their own and make inferences based on what they read. This lesson, from Read Write Think, is embedded with other links related to Poe.

2. "The Cask of Amontillado" This lesson, titled "Carnival and 'The Cask of Amontillado'" created by Christine Poser is aimed at junior high students. Students read the short story and look for foreshadowing, irony, vocabulary, and discuss carnival celebrations around the world, with students making Italian carnival masks of their own. The page includes vocabulary that students may have trouble with, examples of irony and foreshadowing from the text, and study and discussion questions. Poser also provides mask making instructions.

3. "William Wilson" WebQuest This WebQuest created by Carolyn O. Burleson for her eleventh graders is a tool to help students understand human nature as it is portrayed in "William Wilson." Burleson provides a Teachers page that lists CA state standards and ideas on introducing the activity. The web quest requires students to analyze several other web sites and resources she has posted online in order to complete the activity.

4. Blogging with Photovoice Krista Sherman created this activity for her 9-12 students to use with short stories. Students take photographs that relate to the story they are studying. Sherman provides an instructional plan that has "photovoice" activities and ideas listed. She also includes a sample letter to send to parents when explaining the blog project. With the limitlessness of blogging, students could potentially run with the "photovoice" idea: they could illustrate short stories with original photos, blog about the scenes they pictured in their minds while reading the short story and creating a visual of it to be posted to their blog, or do just about anything!

5. Detective Handbook Geared toward junior high students during a mystery unit, this activity requires students to write expository handbooks for the mystery they are reading. Author of the lesson Lisa Gaines provides a PowerPoint presentation explaining the activities. This lesson could be expanded to a classroom mystery Ning or could be posted on a blog.

6. Readers Theater Created by Deborah Kozdras and James Welsh, this lesson teaches students how to listen and read analytically. Students ultimately make a podcast of their own Readers Theater script, which they have created by analyzing audio files of selected texts.

7. "Law and Order" Carla Beard posted a link to this activity on ECNing. In this activity, students script a "Law and Order"-like interrogation of a chosen narrator of one of Poe's short stories while learning to analyze narrators. In order to make this activity more multi-modal, allow time for students to record their interrogations while working in groups (if you have access to recoding and video equipment!) Students could then post their interrogations online to a class Ning, blog, or on YouTube.

8. Online Literature Circles Students could be broken up into lit. circles by a series of Poe short stories or poems. Students will each be assigned a position in the group: connector, passage master, vocabulary, et. cetera, as adapted from Dr. K. Pytash's literature circle handouts from Teaching Reading with Literature Fall, 2009. Student groups could rotate chosen works of Poe so the groups are all reading something different. Each work could have a "big idea" attached - like human suffering, revenge, et. cetera, that students are assigned to look for. They could potentially hold their circles on a blog, through email, in a Ning, or on a site like Blackboard, if it is available.

9. Poe Cyber Guide This cyber guide, or web quest, sends students to a number of different sites to gather information about EAP, instructions for assignments, and requires students to make connections with //Great Expectations// by Charles Dickens. It was created in 1997 by Paul Combs, and all of the links I tried still worked!

10. Your Own Poe Students will read and compare several EAP works with similar themes. Mimicking these similarities, students write their own original stories with examples of these themes. All student stories could later be published on a class website or Ning.

11. "Sensory Images" Adapted from Carol Jago's //Classics in the Classroom//, this lesson explores author diction and sensory images through writing. Students create a table of Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste, and Movement examples from the text. To make this instructional strategy more multi-modal, have students use recording software to record themselves reading the story or poem, like EAP's "An Enigma," a lay it over a slide show of the images that come to mind as they read.

12. "Mad About Poe" Designed for "The Telltale Heart," this activity provides an online version of the story students can annotate with questions and comments or can point out specific examples of symbolism, irony, or whatever they may be learning at the time.

13. Making a Case Break students into two groups: prosecution and defense. Instruct students to closely read "The Telltale Heart" for examples they can use to support their case for or against the narrator of the story. Students will post their cases online for a "jury" to decide guilt.

14. Study Guides This site has student-friendly study guides for almost all of EAP's stories, as well as lesson plans and ideas for teaching his work, mystery, and horror.

15. Horror and Suspense (click on the Power Point link on Chrissy Harris' post) Chrissy Harris posted a power point presentation she created on a horror and suspense discussion on ECNing to kick start their unit on horror and suspense. The students discuss how suspense is created through writing, then watch an Alfred Hitchcock film to discuss how it is created in film. Her students then find examples of suspense on their own to share in a presentation to the class. To add to her lesson, students could be assigned to write their own short story or make a short video employing suspense strategies as discussed in class.

OUT-OF-SEATS ACTIVITIES

1. (link to G.Anderson's main page) Gary Anderson responded to a post by Lindsay Corley, requesting ideas to teach Poe as an introduction to poetry to seventh graders. View the entire discussion.  [|Permalink] Reply by [|Gary Anderson] on January 30, 2009 at 5:58am [|Send Message]Here are some quick ideas to get students out of their seats to play with Poe poems:

1.) Divide students into groups of 3-5. Ask each group to choose a line, word, or image from the poem and then present a tableau (frozen pose) of it. The rest of the class then guesses which line, word, or image they have in mind.

2.) Stage a reader's theatre of the poems. This can be done with the whole class, or the class can be divided in half, with each half doing a different presentation. Assign lines as solos, duets. boys only/girls only, entire group, etc. If you divide the class in half to develop two presentations, each half can serve as an audience for the other.

3.) Bring markers and big pieces of butcher or easel paper. In groups of 2-3, students create posters using words and pictures of an emotion, word, line, or image from the poem, along with any associations they have with it. Then students explain their creations to the rest of the class.

MUSIC 1. The Alan Parsons Project - "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" This album, released in 1976, is a recording of a handful of EAP's most popular works set to original music. This may be a successful alternative to read alouds.

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2. More "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" If Garage Band or another music-making program is available to you, mimic the Alan Parsons Project "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" album with students. Following an EAP or mystery unit, give students a tutorial of Garage Band and instruct them to record their own reading of an EAP story or poem and create original music for it. If done with poetry, students will be able to recognize the importance of meter and rhythm in poetry and potentially become comfortable reading poetry aloud.