Haircut by Ring Lardner | Point of View & Perspective Teaching Package
Point of View and Perspective
Ring Lardner’s Haircut
A complete literature teaching package for Grades 10–11
Ring Lardner’s Haircut (1925) offers students an engaging opportunity to explore how narrative point of view shapes readers’ understanding of characters, events, and their significance.
This ready-to-use teaching package focuses on two essential elements of literary analysis: point of view and narrative perspective. Through guided explanations, examples from well-known literary works, close-reading activities, and analytical questions, students learn to distinguish between different types of narration, recognize the limitations of a narrator’s knowledge, and examine how personal attitudes influence storytelling.
As students read Haircut, they gradually discover how Lardner uses first-person narration, narrator bias, and irony to create a complex relationship between what the narrator believes and what readers understand.
What Students Will Learn
Identify first-person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient, and third-person objective narration.
Distinguish between narrative point of view and a narrator’s personal perspective.
Understand how a narrator’s knowledge, experiences, and assumptions influence the presentation of events.
Recognize narrator bias and unreliable narration through close reading.
Examine how narrative irony emerges when readers understand more than the narrator.
Analyze Lardner’s use of colloquial language and oral storytelling.
Support interpretations of characters and events with relevant textual evidence.
Explain how first-person narration shapes the reader’s understanding of Jim Kendall.
What's Included
The downloadable package contains:
Point of View & Perspective Worksheet: Clear explanations of narrative perspectives, literary examples, and guided analytical practice.
Story and Context Materials: Background information about Ring Lardner, small-town American life in the 1920s, colloquial language, and vocabulary preparation.
Annotated Short Story: The complete text of Haircut, with explanatory footnotes to support comprehension.
While-Reading and After-Reading Activities: Questions examining first-person narration, the narrator’s limited knowledge, narrative reliability, and irony, followed by an analytical writing task.
Teacher’s Edition: Lesson objectives, suggested teaching sequence, questions, sample responses, and instructional guidance.
Instructional Presentation: A 20-slide PowerPoint presentation in editable PPTX format to support classroom instruction and discussion.
Designed for Classroom Use
Suitable for Grades 10–11 English Language Arts, this package combines explicit instruction in narrative techniques with their application to a complete American short story.
The activities guide students from identifying narrative point of view to developing more sophisticated interpretations of perspective, bias, and reliability.
The materials can be used for whole-class instruction, guided reading, independent practice, literary discussion, or homework.
Format: Digital ZIP download containing printable PDFs and an editable PowerPoint presentation.
Delivery: Instant digital download. No physical product will be shipped.
