A Good Man is Hard to Find: Short Story Discussion Guide & Lesson Activity

Item description

Engage Adolescent English Language Arts students (Grades 10-12) with Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.“

O’Connor’s short story is a compelling read, dealing with issues related to class, race, moral hypocrisy, and violence. In the story, a woman from the American South goes on a family vacation to Florida. But not everything turns out as expected . . .

Use this Digital Download for a Two-day English Language Arts Lesson 

Using my tested-in-the-classroom resources, teenagers will want to discuss this satirical story’s explosive and ironic events. So I have loaded this resource with discussion questions that will get your students talking and writing! N.B. — The short story is not included in this digital download, but I provide multiple links to the story online.

Common Core Standards:

This resource aligns well with the Reading Literature standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2. Keep in mind that this lesson works well with eleventh and twelfth graders; I have used it to teach Ninth and Tenth graders — and mature seventh and eighth-graders. 

This Resource Includes the Following Features:

• Teacher’s Lesson Guide & Notes
• Biography Non-Fiction Reading Worksheet + Questions and Research 
• 2 Entrance and Exit Tickets
• 2 Discussion Question Sets (14 questions total)
• Essay Writing Prompt (with a Note-taking graphic organizer)
• Further Reading List
• Answer Keys

I created this resource with high school students in mind. It is designed for a typical High School English curriculum short story unit on character and foreshadowing. You can use this resource as a stand-alone lesson or pair it with a larger unit on American Literature and the Short Story. It also works well in a Humanities course, a Southern Literature course, a Creative Writing class, or a teen advisory lesson on racism, violence in America, and class.

• For my thoughts about teaching this story and sharing it in a high school English class, read my blog post on why “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is still as relevant today as it was in 1955 when it was first published.

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