Lesson Plan: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Essential Questions

• How does setting affect the mood of a story?
• What is a legend?

Literature Connection

• Graphic novel: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Graphic Revolve: Common Core Edition) by Blake A. Hoena

Preview Text Features (10 minutes)

Guide students to locate the play. Then help them preview the text features using the following prompts:

• Read the play’s title and the text above and below it. Look at the illustration. What kind of play do you think this will be? What adjectives would you use to describe the mood of the story based on the illustration? The play will be fictional. It will probably be a spooky story, based on the dark horse with glowing eyes, the headless horseman, and the glowing jack-o’-lantern in the illustration.
• Examine the map and read its caption. Who was Washington Irving? Why did he decide to set his story in Sleepy Hollow? Washington Irving is the author of the story on which the play is based. Sleepy Hollow is a town in the Hudson River Valley, close to where Irving lived when he was 15 years old. He fell in love with that area and its many ghost stories.

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

• Direct students’ attention to the vocabulary box. Read the words (lanky, limbs, the supernatural, strides, fiery) aloud and discuss their definitions.
• Play the Vocabulary Slideshow.

Make a Plan for Reading

Before students start to read, walk them through a reading plan:

• Set a purpose for reading by telling students they’ll make inferences while reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Explain that making an inference means using clues from the text to figure out something that isn’t stated. 
• Point out the activity at the end of the play. Tell students they will complete it after reading.

• Assign roles to students and read the play aloud as a class. Stop after each scene and ask students to summarize what happened.
• After reading, discuss the following close-reading and critical-thinking questions.

Close-Reading Questions (20 minutes)

• What job does the Storyteller do in this play? How is it different from what the Narrators do? (text structure) The Storyteller tells the story, noting events that happened in the past. The Narrators describe the action as you would see it if the play were being performed onstage.
• Why does Ichabod shiver at the end of Scene 2? What can you tell about him from this scene? (inference) He shivers because he is spooked by what he’s just heard about the Wailing Widow. You can tell that Ichabod believes in ghosts and is easily scared.
• What details in Scenes 3 and 4 show that Ichabod likes Katrina? (key details) In Scene 3, Ichabod gives Katrina apples as a gift. Then he smiles shyly when Katrina thanks him. In Scene 4, he can’t stop thinking about Katrina as he’s getting ready to go to her party. He also tells his friend that he’s in love with Katrina.
• In Scene 5, Brom says that Ichabod looks “like an octopus in a tornado” when he’s dancing. What does he mean? (figurative language) Brom means that Ichabod is dancing in an awkward, out-of-control way. In the line before Brom’s, Narrator 3 says that Ichabod’s long limbs (arms and legs) are flying around the room. If an octopus were caught in a tornado, its eight tentacles would probably fly in every direction too.
• How does Ichabod feel as he listens to ghost stories in Scene 6? What clues tell you how he feels? (inference) He feels terrified. The stage directions say he is scared and shivering, and he responds to the stories with exclamations like “Oh my!” and questions that show he can’t believe what he’s hearing (“A man with no head, riding on a horse?”).
• Brom looks at Ichabod when he says “So if you see the Horseman, ride for the bridge.” What hint does this line give about what will happen later? (author’s craft) In the next scene, the Horseman does come after Ichabod, who heads for the bridge. The line also gives the reader a hint that Brom Bones might be involved in the chase.

Critical-Thinking Questions (10 minutes)

• Who do you think the Headless Horseman might be? What clues in the play point to this possibility? (inference) The Headless Horseman is most likely Brom Bones. Clues include: Both Brom and the Headless Horseman ride big black horses; in Scenes 3 and 5, Brom shows that he is jealous of Ichabod, so he might have wanted to chase Ichabod away; in Scene 8, Brom smiles when he says that “the Headless Horseman took care of him”; at the end, the Storyteller says that “if Brom Bones knew more about what really happened to Ichabod, he sure wasn’t telling.”
• Do you find this play scary? Why or why not? (mood) Answers will vary. Some students might say yes, because the characters tell ghost stories and Scene 7 is very suspenseful, with many scary details. Others might say no, because details in the play make it clear that the Headless Horseman is not real, it’s just Brom Bones.

• Have students work in pairs to complete the Spotlight Skill Workout: Inference activity at the end of the play.
• Assign students to work independently on our Character Skill Builder. (Click here to see all your Skill Builders for this feature.)
• Writing prompt: Imagine that you are a reporter for Sleepy Hollow’s newspaper. Write a short article about Ichabod Crane’s disappearance. Give the known facts about the disappearance, as well as one or two ideas about who or what might have caused it. Include an exciting headline!