"A Sound of Thunder" Short Story Unit

Take your students on a journey of discovery with "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury. Bringing this text into the present, the unit examines the feasibility of time travel utilizing modern theories, physics, and fictional representations. Students have the opportunity to work collaboratively to teach their peers about time travel paradoxes, and how they relate to the story and real life.

Prerequisites of this unit:

• Understanding of plot elements and devices
• Knowledge of character types and conflict
• Ability to identify and analyze a theme

Interdisciplinary elements:

• Physics of time travel
• History surrounding time travel and understanding of relativity
• Natural world paradoxes vs. literary paradoxes

Students will be able to:

• Apply non-ELA skills to an ELA context
• Synthesize real world information with a fictional story
• Collaborate to create a multimodal demonstration of their understanding
• Connect facts to elements of fiction to determine their feasibility
• Integrate personal experience and understanding 
• Make predictions based on evidence
• Solve novel problems with provided criteria

This unit does contain a PDF of the story for ease of implementation. I do not own the rights to the story; it can be downloaded from the commons online. Images and graphics within this unit are solely for the purpose of illustrating concepts within the unit. The buyer understands that they are paying for the pedagogy and the unit information that has been uniquely gathered for use in teaching desired ELA standards.