### Lesson Plan: Suspense in Literature
#### Subject: Literature in English
#### Level: Senior Secondary 2 (Grade 11)
#### Duration: 90 minutes
#### Topic: Suspense
---
#### Objectives:
1. **Understanding Suspense**: Students will understand what suspense is and its role in literature.
2. **Identifying Suspense**: Students will identify techniques used by authors to create suspense.
3. **Analyzing Suspense**: Students will analyze excerpts from texts to understand how suspense influences the reader’s experience.
4. **Creative Writing**: Students will create their own short passages demonstrating suspense.
---
#### Materials:
- Whiteboard and markers
- Projector and laptop
- Handouts with text excerpts
- Notebooks and pens
- Short story or novel excerpt (e.g., Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart" or an excerpt from a thriller novel)
---
#### Lesson Outline:
1. **Introduction to Suspense (10 minutes)**
- Begin with a discussion: What is suspense? Why is it important in stories?
- Define suspense: Suspense is a feeling of excitement or anxiety about what will happen next in a story.
- Explain how suspense is utilized in different genres, especially in mystery, thriller, and horror.
2. **Techniques for Creating Suspense (15 minutes)**
- Discuss techniques authors use to create suspense:
- **Foreshadowing**: Giving clues or hints about what might happen later.
- **Pacing**: Varying the speed at which events unfold.
- **Detailed Descriptions**: Using vivid imagery to create a tense atmosphere.
- **Unreliable Narrator**: A narrator whose credibility is compromised.
- **Cliffhangers**: Ending a scene or chapter at a critical moment.
- Show examples from well-known texts.
3. **Analyzing Text Excerpts (20 minutes)**
- Distribute handouts with selected passages filled with suspense (e.g., an excerpt from "The Tell-Tale Heart").
- Read the passages as a class.
- Discuss and identify the techniques used by the author to create suspense.
- Prompt students with questions about how the passages make them feel and why.
4. **Class Activity - Group Work (20 minutes)**
- Divide the class into small groups.
- Assign each group a different excerpt or scene from a suspenseful story.
- Each group will analyze their excerpt, focusing on how suspense is built and its effect on the reader.
- Groups will present their findings to the class.
5. **Creative Writing Exercise (20 minutes)**
- Students will individually write a short suspenseful scene or paragraph using the techniques discussed.
- Encourage students to think about setting, character actions, and pacing.
- Select a few volunteers to share their work with the class, discussing what techniques they used.
6. **Conclusion and Homework (5 minutes)**
- Summarize the key points covered in the lesson.
- Answer any remaining questions from students.
- Assign homework: Read a suspenseful short story or a chapter from a novel and write a brief analysis on the techniques used to build suspense.
---
#### Evaluation:
- Participation in discussions and group activities.
- Quality of analysis during group presentations.
- Creativity and application of techniques in the writing exercise.
- Homework analysis assessment.
---
By the end of the lesson, students should have a deeper understanding of how suspense is constructed and its importance in literature, along with improved analytical and creative writing skills.