At the halfway point in TKAM, I have my freshman choose groups and they then draw from a hat a character from the novel. Then they outline a member of the group onto a large piece of paper and create the appropriate label to identify the character. They have to spend a few minutes identifying character traits from the novel with an action, comment from another character or something the character says to support their characterizaton. Then they put them outside in the hallway. Then throughout the second half of the novel, they have to add to the pictures with new information.
An assignment that doesn't really deserve to write home about. It's fun and the students get to visualize the information. However, I had a senior (I teach TKAM to freshmen) ask what they were doing. The senior then said, can we add to them? It became a school project. Being in a small school, I'm guaranteed that I've had every student as a freshman and they've all read the novel. The upperclassmen added to the charts from an older perspective. The older students also ended up discussing the novel in relationship to what we were doing in their individual classes as well.
Now, the freshmen first thought, "Cool, the juniors and seniors will do all our work for us." But it didn't work that way. They actually were drawn into conversations outside of class about the novel they were reading in class. It became a visualized debate on the walls and the upperclassmen understood that novels change as their perspective changes and the freshmen understood that it's not simply an assignment for class and then it goes away.
I was thrilled that the novel remained with the kids. To this day I'm amazed that the kids show so much more if I just listen to them. I've often wondered what would have happened if I had told that senior that he couldn't add to the charts. That's a freshmen project....
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4 comments:
I like this idea. I teach all subjects for 7th and 8th grade. I could integrate this into an art project also.
This kind of sounds like a Flat Stanley project that 2 of the classes do here and the other 4 classes go and look on the walls to see where the Flat Stanleys have went and it gives the students a chance to talk about their project and what happened in the story about Flat Stanley
This is a great idea that I think I will try to do in my 8th grade class. Older students often ask me if they can read The Outsiders again. Isn't it amazing when they look back at a book from previous year with fondness and something to contribute.
This is a great idea, but I'm afraid I can see some vandalism occuring in a larger school, unfortunately. In my situation I believe it would work to assign characters to students in the three sections I teach, then post the characters and let the students in each section add to them. Maybe they could leave a response journal to share their thoughts on the novel and the characters.
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