®APTER Draft 3

Jim Lawrence

3/11/08

The Giver Unit Plan:

Developing Assessment Practices

and

Learning to Provide Useful Feedback

Part One: Method to the Madness

I will be teaching a three week unit on The Giver during my lead teaching period; this is a text that my mentor teacher has always taught his seventh grade students within the greater context of a science fiction unit. There are several key objectives that I hope to attain with my students by the end of this sequence, influenced by my own beliefs about what is important for my students and what I hope they will learn over the course of this unit. On the most fundamental level, I hope to further develop my students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking ability, while continuing to cultivate critical literacy skills. Through a variety of lessons and learning experiences, I anticipate that students will enjoy reading this exceptional novel (even if they have read it before) and understand how they can make sense and relate to the messages that Lois Lowry hoped her readership would attain.

Lowry’s portrayal of the utopian society in The Giver is both memorable and haunting. I hold similar goals for my own planning during this unit; more specifically, unlike the members of the community that Jonas is part of, I want my students to remember and experience my teaching in full, living color. Utopian theory aside, what makes the novel such a great fit within the seventh grade curriculum is the framework of the narrative, told through the experiences of the turning-twelve protagonist Jonas. Through Jonas, I believe that students have the opportunity to see their own reflections, and will be able to relate to his adolescent struggles (“the stirrings,” significant moral quandaries, freewill vs. extreme regulation, etc.). I want my students to see that we can understand our own situations in life - our own stories - better by learning and analyzing the story told by Lowry in The Giver. I have made a concentrated attempt to plan the unit with my students in mind throughout. Activities have been planned in order to utilize multiple learning styles. This multimodal approach to teaching the novel, involving multiple sensory experiences, should prove both stimulating and educational for my students (and for me as well!). The more dynamic I make this unit, the more opportunity I am afforded to impress the literature upon students of all skill and interest levels.

I believe that teaching a novel also provides an opportunity for creating plenty of “A-ha!” or “Ooohhh…” moments with the students. Novels, being longer, provide for more material to work with and utilize. The Giver is rich in thematic elements that can be related to students’ lives. When I have elicited A-ha’s and Ooohhh’s from a class, I know that I have enabled students to make those connections and flip those breaker switches, illuminating truths and life lessons that dawn on them like so many dazzling sunrises. It makes my job as a teacher that much more rewarding. As stated, I also believe that students should be exposed to a wide variety of activities; this not only stimulates the unit for the students, but also for me, the teacher. I have planned a gateway activity to serve as a pre-reading exercise, vocabulary activities to enrich student’s vocabularies as well as aid in their understanding of the novel, discussion and interpretation of key moments and themes within the text, employing personal response and group work (in keeping with the notion that “we can accomplish more together than is possible alone”), examinations of literary devices, and a variety of creative projects and activities. With this variety in assignment comes variety in assessment methods. Students will be given more formal quizzes and tests throughout the unit to check for understanding of the stated objectives, in addition to clearly-defined writing assignments that will demonstrate their grasp on themes, a major learning objective in the unit. The primary learning objectives for this unit are:

§  Students will analyze characters and their situations to better understand the themes of the novel

§  Students will practice reading aloud and silently to improve their skills in each area

§  Students will respond to prompts and questions, both written and orally, that will allow them to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of main events, characters, and thematic elements in The Giver

§  Students will enrich their vocabularies through a variety of vocabulary skill exercises

§  Students will practice their writing skills through a variety of writing assignments, with the goal that students will better comprehend the story, think critically about and connect the novel to their own lives, and continue to develop their grammar and English language usage skills

§  Students will demonstrate their understanding of The Giver in novel ways, including oral presentations and artistically

Part Two: Plan Outline, Explanations, and Providing Feedback

I have tried to structure my unit on The Giver to provide consistency and flow throughout the duration of the unit, both for my students and myself.

Day One:

Pre-Reading

1. Read Lowry Bio together & discuss.

2. Talk about Utopia via the FYI sheet. “Create a Perfect Community” Warm-Up (groups of 2-3):

-Include name, system of government, physical description, account of how people spend their time / days, rules, roles of people, education, goods and services

3. Anticipation Guide: Think-Pair-Share, Group Discussion

As you read, think about what The Giver says about our future on Earth – and our past.

Day Two:

2. Read-aloud as a class, first chapter read to them, then for the second chapter, allow student volunteers. Discuss plot / stylistic points as necessary. Continue through Chapter Four as a class.

-p. 3, Asher’s apology: write some rules on the board and the apologies that must be spoken, including the apology response. Ask whether the kids agree with this.

Hand out Strategic Reading 1, Identifying Character Traits, and have the students work. Finish for homework and hand in / discuss tomorrow.

Day Three:

1. Begin with a discussion of the homework, the character traits sheet. Students hand these in now.

2. Have students write about a dream from last night, or a memorable dream from their life. Share, if desired.

3. Read Chapter Five together, discussing the dream sharing activity and its function in the community. After finished reading, discuss: How are age groups differentiated in your community culture? Select four age groups and describe them briefly – tell how they are clearly differentiated.

HW: Chapters 6 and 7, Vocab 6-7.

Day Four:

Discuss Reading:

1. Go over Vocab 6-7 as a class (make overhead).

2. Index Cards with job assignments on them (make 35 of them, distribute a job to each student) – Answer following questions on a separate sheet of paper:

*What is your assignment? *How do you feel about your assignment? *Do you feel that you are suited for it? Why or why not? *Worst thing about the assignment. *Best thing about the assignment. *How do you feel about having your job chosen for you?

3. If time permits, read Chp. 8 as a class, aloud, or audio recording, discussing as you go.

Day Five:

1. Go over Chapter 8, then read Chapters 9 and 10, discussing.

-How will his new instructions impact his life in the community?

-What would it be like to have no knowledge of your community / country / world history?

Quiz over Chapters 8-10: If there is no time, give the quiz as a take-home assignment, or on the following Monday.

Throughout the unit on The Giver, I would intersperse in-class reading time, sometimes individually, sometimes as a group (aloud or with audiobook), and then discuss key concepts as necessary. Reading comprehension quizzes in the form of multiple choice and matching quizzes were given at intervals through the novel, as were additional vocabulary assignments, which ranged from applying vocabulary concepts to their own lives to identifying which vocabulary word was represented by various drawings that I provided. Reading and discussion made up the most common routine through the unit, with some openers interspersed to get students back into the text after a night of reading. For example, there is a time in the book where Jonas must share his dreams. As an opener, I decided to have students write down a memorable dream from the past few weeks or further, then share. By taking the text back to their own experiences, I hoped to make the events more relevant and memorable. It seems tedious and unnecessary to outline the discussions from every day, so I will instead place a focus on several “key” assignments or moments and how my assessment practices were associated. One of these assignments was what I referred to as the “Colors” activity.

The basic breakdown for the “Colors” activity runs thusly: this activity was to be done after the students were assigned chapter twelve for reading homework. After reviewing the handout instructions with students as a class (as well as a brief discussion on the major events of chapter twelve), I broke them into groups of around four. Each group of students had five pieces of brightly colored printer paper. I gave out a lively sample of green, yellow, blue, purple, and red. Students were then to write down associations, memories, emotions, or objects that they associated with the various colors. For the artistically inclined, I gave the option to draw their association, further differentiating this learning task. After the groups got a chance to write for each color, they were to share what they had written or drawn for each. After this, students would then hold a discussion in their group, using three discussion questions for guidance. This took the entire class period. The following day, I brought back the discussions (after giving about five to ten minutes to get back into groups and collect their ideas once more) into a whole-class format, with the goal of teasing out the power that color has on the human psyche and emotions. We observed common emotions and memories. We also discussed why a community would choose to lack color, and the possible implications of such a choice. Unplanned, the discussions also led to a give-and-take conversation about symbolism and color – I was pleased with this activity, and I felt that it brought this important aspect of the novel “home” for many students. Groups seemed engaged throughout the day; silently writing their associations and passing the colors on at the start of the lesson, then raising their hands to report their progress to me as I set each group up for small discussion. If only I had received your emailed link to that wonderful color-symbolism website earlier: this activity could have been further enhanced.

After the period ended, I collected each groups’ color sheets and their half-sheet of directions and discussion questions, which contained their names. I took a look at what they had written that evening, and was pleased that they had seemed to be engaged with the activity, and seemed to have taken it seriously. I took a random sampling across hours from three groups. Some sample responses for green were: Michigan State, grass or nature (“eco-stuff”), the Hulk, “forest floor – NOT canopy,” “Slytherin,” envy, and soccer. Some responses for yellow: “disgust,” light and the sun, energy, warmth, surprise, and “fast cars.” For blue: peace, water, “Bora Bora,” blueberry pie, “blue states in elections,” and “baby beluga.” More responses for red: anger, fire, roses, matadors (picture of a man toro-ing a bull), heat, blood, and “looove.” Finally, responses for purple: “uniqueness,” childhood (Barney), sadness, “when holding breath,” grape flavor, and “Grimace” (semi-obscure and bulbous McDonald’s character). One student from this three-group sample wrote “Mr. McKennon’s sweater” for every color, referring to a picture on my desk, showing several of my fellow teachers and myself around the holidays, donned in “bad holiday sweaters.” One can only imagine the horror that was Mr. McKennon’s sweater.

I appreciated my students’ unique and varied senses of humor in responses, although they did not seem to use this humor in a negative, insolent manner. As I looked at their responses, a conversation on symbolism took place in my mind, and I decided to include it, and emphasize how colors can be used in movies or other books to convey certain emotions or feelings / associations, much like in the activity. I chose not to provide written feedback on their colored sheets, checking to see that students were each getting a chance to write or draw something for each color during the class period. I wanted to physically check-in with the groups, a sort of mini-conference time, to get a sense for what some of their responses were, who said or drew what, and how they might proceed into their discussion. For example, I would pose the provided questions to a group, and try to stimulate and provoke additional responses. I find that small “conference” style feedback, whether in the setting of this creative group project or more individual assignments, such as the previous persuasive essay, allow me to personalize my feedback so much more and really get to the heart of what each student needs to proceed or succeed. Meeting with students can help to streamline the constant diagnostic process of teaching. The only problem that I noted while providing my oral feedback with the groups was some “shuffling of feet” after the students got the chance to write or draw something for each color; it seemed that some groups were reluctant to take the activity to the next level. I hoped to make it easier for them to transition through these individual meetings and preliminary prompting. No student absolutely refused to participate as I went around checking each group before the transition.