Description
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a powerful short story that invites students to explore irony, gender roles, and personal freedom within the context of nineteenth-century society.
This resource includes the full text of the story and provides a quick, accessible introduction to the historical context of the time period. Students learn about Kate Chopin’s background and the broader social climate of the nineteenth century, including the women’s suffrage movement, which helps ground their understanding of the story’s themes and character motivations.
Before reading, students complete an activating strategy designed to build interest and activate prior knowledge. As they read, students work through two sets of reading comprehension questions, completed during and after reading, that guide close reading and literary analysis. The questions prompt students to examine key elements such as imagery, situational irony, dramatic irony, mood, symbolism, point of view, author’s purpose, theme, and connotation, all while citing textual evidence.
Complete answer keys are included to support instruction and assessment, making this a low-prep, classroom-ready lesson.
This story is an excellent addition to units on short stories, irony, women’s literature, feminist literature, or Women’s History Month, and works well in both middle school and high school ELA classrooms.