I recently started teaching the novel "Speak" with my honors freshman classes. They love it! One of the things that I wanted them to focus on when they are text marking their books ( they annotate in all of their novels) are the motifs the author uses. Below is a visual I made to remind my students what they should be looking for as they read. The images are supposed to be a mirror, seeds, trees, and lips/mouths. Feel free to steal this idea to help your kiddies!
Classroom Plot Line
My philosophy on teaching is to try and give students all the tools that they need to succeed, whether this is simple school supplies, graphic organizers, checklists of spectating, or supplemental materials, I try and put myself in my students shoes and see what would help them the most. One thing that has come in very handy for my TKAM unit, is the class plot line. As we complete chapters in the novel I add a piece to our plot line. It's simply a sentence or two about the most memorable or important events of the chapter. It helps the kids keep things in order and organize events in their mind. Here are my list of events from each chapter if you want to give it a shot! I love teaching Suzan Collins’ The Hunger Games. It was literally my
dream unit when I was in undergrad, and I am so blessed that I got to teach it to two of my classes my first year teaching. This book is a story that everyone should read. Not only is it entertaining and makes kids excited about reading, but it is smart! I think I could create a whole college course on the social commentary that Collins brings to the table in this dystopian tale. However, since social commentary is a bit over my struggling reader’s heads, ( I teach the H.Games to my reading fundamentals classes) I came up with a few lessons to bring it to there level, and slowly introduced the more complex aspects of this novel. One of my kid’s favorite activities that we did with The Hunger Games, was keep track of the death toll of the tributes during the games. As we read chapter by chapter, Katniss lets the reader know which tributes are killed. I made a district line up with little boy and girl tribute figure below each district, and when someone is killed, we cross them off with a big red ex. Students begged to be the ones to keep our death list up to date. This may seem a little morbid, but it was a great tool to help my readers visualize which characters were left, and it gave them a concrete look at the magnitude of exactly how many children were dying in this book. (that’s the whole point of the book! ) It’s easy to read in the first chapter of the games that 11 tributes are dead. But when you physically cross them off a list one by one, it really hits home. The extent of the brutality of the Capitol, and of these Games, is revealed in front of your student’s eyes. It’s also a great way to keep track of the plot. I had students record which chapters tributes died in so we could easily find key parts of the story when discussing. Overall this was a great tool and an exciting way to get kids involved with the story. I have pictures attached of our District line up. I used the district crests from the Hunger Games movie site and simply drew blue and pink stick figures under each crest to signify the boy and girl tribute from each district. As we learned character’s names the class added those as well. Keeping organized is one think I try to make a priority. If I feel unorganized, my whole day feels frazzled. It took me awhile to figure out how best to situate my classroom handouts, homework, turned in work, graded work, and projects. I'm still learning and still switching things around. One thing that I love to use to stay organized are my handout boxes. I got adorable boxes from the Target dollar section to use for class handouts. I have a box for today, tomorrow, and yesterday. These boxes were $1.00 each. In fact, The dollar section at Target is a teacher's dream. A lot of things are geared towards younger grades, but I still find many different organizational and classroom tools that are amazing for a high school classroom. I constantly check back for new and different supplies at my local Target. Many times things are geared toward different holidays (I bought my boxes around valentines day, hence the pink theme) so often colors and designs are limited. BUT IT'S ONLY A DOLLAR! Beggars can't be choosers and I for sure have no problem taking up a great deal, no matter the color. |
Author Nerdy 9th grade English teacher who loves books and teaching. |