Darkness, Dreams, and Headless Horsemen: Short Stories of Colonial New England

8th Grade Literature

Halloween comes early for the middle school students at St. Matt's!  After reviewing active reading strategies, eighth grade students kick off their literature class with a unit about short stories of the colonial United States. Reading suspenseful works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, students will learn about the concerns and imaginations of the early colonists through literature. Reoccurring themes involving folklore, the supernatural, and early American landscape shape the plots of the short stories, and make them unique to the time period. At the finale of the unit, students will present one of the short stories and explain why it is an early American text through either a presentation or writing.