Teachers often request a shorter work to pair with Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, and yesterday I found one. On the website, AmericanLiterature.com, I stumbled upon H. H. Munro’s “The Open Window,” and my first thought was that this would pair nicely with The Crucible. A young girl, alone with a guest, realizes that he…
All posts in Perfect Pairings
Perfect Pairing: Hell of a Book with Ghost Boys
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott needs to be in every high school classroom library and on every reading list. The main character is a Black author who is traveling on his book tour to promote Hell of a Book. He is visited by the Kid, who is the ghost of a Black boy…
Perfect Pairing: “The Split Cherry Tree” by Jesse Stuart and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Teachers who are looking for a short story to pair with To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, may find that Jesse Stuart’s short story, “The Split Cherry Tree” works well. In the short story, the protagonist must stay late at school as punishment, which causes his hard-working father to make a visit to the…
Perfect Pairing: The Most Dangerous Game and Candy Land
Looking for a fun way to end the year that is still about literature, but is not an essay or a test? Try transforming a short story, novel, or poem into a board game. For example, Candy Land is a great game that fits a journey or pursuit type of story. Students can use an…
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” & Lois Lowry’s The Giver
These two texts are made for each other. Students enjoy reading them, teachers enjoy teaching them, and together they make for a lively class discussion. The setting of a futuristic, controlling society contrasts with a traditional, old fashioned town, and yet they are eerily similar. Students can analyze language, dialogue, and writing techniques. When in…
“The Yellow Wallpaper” and Jenga
For today’s Teacher Tuesday post, I suggest a combination of a board game and a short story, two of my favorite Perfect Pairings. Board games are the perfect tangible, concrete form to illustrate plot, conflict, resolution, consequences, setting, journey, and many more literary techniques. Board games are also affordable and readily available, and students can…
Beowulf, Grendel, & Toni Morrison
Among the questions in the teaching groups that I follow on social media, I often see requests for an essay or short work to tie in with either Beowulf or Grendel. I want to share a short essay that analyzes Grendel by John Gardner, which many high school teachers are tasked with teaching. In her…
