The+Age+of+Innocence

= The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton = = = Image courtesy of :

This page was created by Prairie View A&M students Carrie Newman and Chassidy Guidry for the course: //Studies in The Novel//. This site includes information on Edith Wharton's novel, The Age of Innocence, as well as lessons plans that are geared toward teaching the text in secondary education. These lesson plans are distinctively targeted towards teaching high school students, and provide many examples of teaching approaches and methods to help students better understand the novel.

Lesson Plans for High School Students:

Lesson Plan 1: [|Teaching the Age of Innocence in the High School Classroom]

The first lesson plan is directed towards high school students. This lesson plan was available online, and includes a variety of in-class handouts and information on both the novel and the background of the text. This lesson plan is extremely helpful to instructors, it breaks the process of teaching the novel down into the span of ten days, which is two weeks of class time, and makes it easy to organize comprehension. The lesson plan gives daily information and handouts which help students understand and provide their own feedback of their reading, which is very helpful because the lessons follow the novel as the students read it. Students are given a certain amount of chapters to read for each day, and the lessons complement their reading schedule and comphrehension by relating to what they have read and the things that they take from the novel's content. The lesson is best to use in a high school classroom, as the novel's content is more suited for students in grades 10-12.

Lesson Plan 2: [|Teaching the Age of Innocence: Penguin.com]

This lesson plan is also geared towards a high school audience, but it only provides several discussion questions that students can consider while reading the novel. Although it does not follow a set schedule that addresses student reading and comprehension, it does provide background on both the novel and the author. This can be a helpful tool in the classroom because student's can make connections between the author and her work. The discussion questions can also help instructors form topics for essays or classroom discussion that can assess their student's comprehension of the text.

Lesson Plan 3: [|Study Questions Comparing The Movie To The Novel]

Often times at the high school level, it is helpful to show film adaptations of a novel when it is available. This lesson plan includes study questions that compare the film version to the novel. This can be helpful in introducing students to an alternate form of a novel besides basic typology. By completing the exercises in this lesson plan, students will be able to learn how to critically analyze the differences in film and written literature to argue the Edith Wharton's motives and intent of the original novel.

Film Clip from the 1993 Movie:[|1993 Film] This film clip is taken from the scene in which Ellen Olenska arrives at the van der Luydens, in chapter 8. The film clip can help students better understand how Ellen is perceived by New York society and certain important characters like Newland Archer.

Lesson Plan 4: [|The Importance of Understanding The Background Information of The Novel] This lesson plan is beneficial for students to read at the beginning of reading the novel. It focuses on the background information of the book. Since the setting and cultural aspects of society are so important in understanding //The Age of Innocence// is important to grasp these components early on in the novel. This lesson plan includes a powerpoint presentation that will be helpful in students in correlating their beliefs about Old New York society. Useful Essays/Works Cited: We found several scholarly essays online that can help students better understand the context of the novel.

Useful Essays/ MLA Citation:

We found several scholarly essays that can help students understand the context of the novel. These essays range from topics about New York society, to character point of view and comparing the film to the book, as well as many other aspects of the work.

Works Cited Page for Lesson Plans: