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ORC Resource Number #169
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All in a Day's Work: Modernizing Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener
Promising Practice
PROFESSIONAL COMMENTARY

This lesson plan uses a passage from Herman Melville's 1856 tale, "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street," to encourage literary response and creative writing. Students respond in writing to the short story by creating their own modern versions of the tale. This lesson allows students to apply narrative writing strategies in a creative context. Extension activities, interdisciplinary connections, and links to supporting internet sites are also provided. (author/ncl)

CAREER APPLICATION

Arts & Communication and Human Resources career-technical teachers will be able to extend the writing and reading lessons adapted from Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" by using the suggestions under "Interdisciplinary Connections" toward the end of the lesson plans. The extended activities suggested within the lesson could also be targeted to teach a specific focus to career-technical students. Photography and film-making students, for instance, will benefit from producing their own film of a similar current-day workplace situation, as opposed to the 19th century setting of the law-office cleric in "Bartleby." Further exploration of the links will provide information of concern to Human Resource students, as a study of Melville's biography yields the fact that both he and his father were presumed "mad." Opportunities abound to discuss such "madness" in terms of what is generally known and presumed to be true today about mental health.

OHIO STANDARDS
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English Language Arts Standards
Acquisition of Vocabulary Standard
Reading Process: Concepts of Print, Comprehension Strategies and Self-Monitoring Strategies Standard
Reading Applications: Literary Text Standard
Writing Process Standard
Writing Applications Standard
Writing Conventions Standard
NATIONAL STANDARDS
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Standards for the English Language Arts
Range of materials and purposes for reading
Write, speak, and visually represent to create text
Purposes for using spoken, written, and visual language
RESOURCE TYPE
Instructional Resource
PRACTICE LEVEL
Promising Practice
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
Grades 9–12
CAREER FIELDS
Human Services;
Information Technology;
Arts & Communication;
General Career Skills
TOPICS
English Language Arts --
Literature;
Reading;
Literary Response;
Writing;
Grammar & Conventions;
Writing Applications;
Writing Process;
Writing Strategies;
OHIOWINS INSTRUCTIONAL TOPICS
Writing Applications;
Response to Literature;
Literature;
American Literature
KEYWORDS
Herman Melville;
short story
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Author: Jackie Glasthal