The Book Thief-Summer Reading Club reading
CENTRAL IDEAS
This lesson covers the reading we are doing for The Karabaic Summer Book Club. I would love to have this essay opportunity open up the new year, using the book club-chats, discussions, and notes from our summer reading book club to formulate the response for the narrative essay for, The Book Thief!
Content: Life in Nazi Germany during World War II was horrific for Germans who were Jewish, and was frightening for many Germans who were not Jewish.
Reading: The Book Thief, Social Studies Text and handouts-from students’ 7th grade year studying of The Holocaust.
Writing: A Narrative essay will demonstrate students’ understanding of the content of what life was like during World War II for Jews and non Jews, and of the narrative essay format.
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Focusing Question:
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE FOR A CHILD LIKE LIESEL OR RUDY DURING THE TIME OF THE HOLOCAUST?
Focus- Life was horrific for Jews, and frightening and controlled for German non Jews during World War II in Nazi Germany.
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Building Content Knowledge:
Vocabulary-is pulled out-type in the reader’s guide I create and is placed in the context sentence where it was found. I look up the word-offer a definition, and the link for listening to the word pronounced in Merriam Webster. This is because there is so much dense vocabulary needed to understand this challenging text and requiring students to do that much work in the summer, is not conducive to having them ‘volunteer’ to join the book club.
Guided Reading-using teacher developed reading guide to guide their independent reading of this challenging text-as the book chat will also offer further explanation, discussion, clarification of words, thoughts, character ideas, motives, descriptions etc.
Guided conversation-Book Chat-prompt to discuss on the day of the book chat-in googlechat- as a way to frame the discussion.
Notetaking-notemaking-I offer students an extensive reading guide-page by page-and students are encouraged to use post it notes on pages as needed-when reading- and then if they can, add their ideas to my notes-add their ideas in color and with their name and share on googledocs.
Visualizing/imaging-students will draw a picture of their character with their character in the middle and like a graphic organizer where the words extend from the middle, the essence of the character will expand from the middle in the form of pictures that represent the character and the struggles, etc. These pictures will also help to organize and frame their ideas when writing their narratives. In this way, students can access and demonstrate their understandings visually as well as in written form. The visual representations of the character and their visual representations, can help students to write their narratives.
These notes/pictures will be used to help develop their narrative of The Book Thief.
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Structures:
Students will use a graphic organizer, student chat logs, pictures and student designed visuals, teacher written narrative in student form.Step by step writing of a narrative.
Discussions that occurred in the summer during the summer Karabaic Book Club-Virtual book club, will be used to create the narrative writing piece. Chats will be saved in googledocs and shared through googleshare. Students will be able to access these transcripts as needed in their googledocs.
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Writing /Revising:
Students will use my summer reading guide notes, their additions to my notes, chat logs-where key ideas are highlighted and explored to help them to have the information to write their narrative essay.
Student and teacher will write/interact/ in real time and/or virtually, during the summer book chat club, and use those notes/interactions as the basis for their narrative writing piece. These support materials will also be used to help them fine tune their thinking/learning/and reflection-on The Holocaust from both Jewish and non Jewish German perspectives. They will post on our e-site-Sakai, Google, or Haiku.
Students will also write blog posts in response to other students’ work, with comments that highlight student’s ideas. Since students have completed numerous blog posts, this group does not need a model.
Students will be introduced to the genre of a Narrative Essay-the literary conventions of narrative Essays will be discussed, identified-notetaking on writing a Narrative Essay.
Students will read narrative samples.
A teacher written model narrative will be offered, read and discussed
Teacher and students will dissect the teacher narrative and we will identify the essential parts of the narrative essay. They will Label the pieces of the essay, to bring awareness of the essential elements. This will be completed either as an assignment on the board or on their e-site.
Next day-students will color code and label the different parts-independently.
Students will be introduced to the genre of Narrative-the literary traits of narrative essay will be discussed, and identified. Students will complete note-taking on narrative writing.
Perhaps a partial skeleton of a graphic organizer will be presented where students have to fill in the missing pieces with teacher direction.
Students will fill in the graphic organizer for the character from The Book Thief who will be their Narrative character.
Students will choose the name of the character, will identify the specific character descriptions and quotes from the character-using chat notes/study guide I created with student’s additions to the notes.
Step by step, students will write their narrative-getting feedback along the way-handing in electronically, editing electronically, and continuing to work on their essay over time.
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Assessment:
Different drafts of their narratives will be saved in their googledocs and shared with me through the share feature. With each revision, students’ growth will be seen.
More opportunities will be scheduled into the year where students will have the opportunity to write subsequent narratives. Baselines will be compared as well as revisions
Hi Stephanie, I really liked the way you linked the students' summer reading to a discussion and writing assignment in the fall. It demonstrates your dedication as a teacher to hold the students accountable for their summer work; way to go! I also find it an interesting and difficult topic. I like that you are clearly including the two perspectives which help students to respect multiple points of view, and write about same. I also liked it when you discussed linking the visual image of the character as part of the graphic organizer. We see, we write; we write, we see. . . The Google Doc Share is also a convenient way to check in with kids, and for them to share with each other. Again, it encourages ownership of the process; and yet, you're also there for support. Enjoy!
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ReplyDeleteStephanie,
I'm very intrigued by your use of Google Docs and chat to help students edit and revise their writing. As an adult I've found that to be an effective process for collaborative writing; I love the idea of teaching our students to use those same tools. Have you done it before? I'm curious if you have students whose access to computers/Internet is limited, and how you might accommodate for them.
I also thought it was great that you start with introducing challenging vocabulary. I imagine, given the subject matter the book deals with, that there is some content specific vocabulary as well as some descriptive vocabulary that your students may not be immediately familiar with. I'm impressed that you've taken the time to pull that vocabulary out so your students are better prepared to understand the book.
I agree with Deb - it's great that you're linking summer work with a fall assignment! I imagine it'll help you build or keep community with your students as you chat with them throughout the summer. Have fun!
Zee, thank you for your kind comments. The book is quite challenging for my struggling readers, but so many wanted to read it when they saw it. I had to go and buy more on the very last day of school. Some have not attended the chat and I don't know if they are reading or not. That is what happens sometimes, and I can't get caught up in it. They are 7th graders turning to 8th graders, after all. The vocabulary is not only specific to the Nazis, but words like flippant: lacking proper respect or seriousness, venue: a place where events of a specific type are held, and ire: openly displayed anger. These are words that my students wouldn't know. I also provide the context where the word has been found on the page and a link to hear it pronounced. Since I only have a few students, the computer access problem is not a big issue. Most of my students have access. I have one student who would normally have to go to the library to chat, but they boot him off after 30 minutes, so that hasn't really worked. I worked with our awesome tech guru at the SAU and he is going to our Supervisory Union to go online. They know the day and time that he will show up and they have a laptop there for him. They also help him print the reader's guide. The only problem is that without having a computer handy when he reads, he can't hear how the word is pronounced because he can't access the hot links I enclose on the googledoc I send out. All in all it has been a great experiment. I have one student that has not shown up but emailed me this morning that she likes to sleep in and forgets, but she'd like to join us this Friday! I send out my Reader's Guide to all the kids who wanted to join us, just in case they might be reading on their own, or might decide to dive in at any time. It's a fun but heavy on the work side for me as it takes me 2-3 hours to read and create the Reader's Guide for each section we are reading.However, if it gets even one student to say, "I love this book" like I have already heard, then it is so worth my time and effort!
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