Daily Lessons for Teaching Tales of Ordinary Madness

Daily Lessons

This section contains 30 daily lessons. Each one has a specific objective and offers at least three (often more) ways to teach that objective. Lessons include classroom discussions, group and partner activities, in-class handouts, individual writing assignments, at least one homework assignment, class participation exercises and other ways to teach students about the text in a classroom setting. Use some or all of the suggestions provided to work with your students in the classroom and help them understand the text.

Lesson 1

Objective: In Tales or Ordinary Madness, "A .45 to Pay the Rent" and "Doing Time with Public Enemy No. 1" are two different stories about men in some kind of prison--Duke in "A .45 to Pay the Rent" is a convicted criminal who is resentful of the limits he has when not in prison, and Bukowski is an apathetic man who is actually imprisoned for draft-dodging. While...
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