Lesson Plan for In Search of a Novel

"Weslandia" by Paul Fleischman

My students have a separate reading class from Language Arts but occasionally we read a book in class. One activity we do is with the picture book "Weslandia" by Paul Fleischman. I discovered the main idea to use this book from another book called "Books, Lessons, Ideas - for Teaching the Six Traits". First I read the book aloud to the class, showing them the pictures as I go. Even 7th graders like to be read to. The book is not written in 1st person so the reader can only guess at what the main character, Wesley, is thinking or feeling. After reading and discussing the story, the students write Wesley’s diary. Each student takes a day (or event) from the book and pretends he or she is Wesley. I write out the days/events on slips of paper and the students draw a slip out of a hat. I divide the days/events of the book up according to how many students I have in the class. The students write what they think Wesley would write in his diary based on what he did or what happened to him that day. When we are done writing, the students present their diary entry to the class. Of course we do this in order of the events in the book. By reading the diary entries aloud they not only get some practice with public speaking they also get a chance to hear what their classmates wrote. The trait that is being focused on is organization, but we cover other areas as well.