Another Unit Plan Idea

Maybe I will instead do something about the coming of age, the journey from childhood to adulthood, in terms of recognizing the world around you and its various beauties and cruelties. Hmmmmmm.

To Kill a Mockingbird. The Kite Runner. A Separate Peace. The Catcher in the Rye. All are such riveting, well-written books. I could include a New Yorker story about Salinger, written soon after he died this year. Hmmmmmmmmm.

If it was a six-week long session, we could likely get through two of these books: The Kite Runner and To Kill a Mockingbird would show hos children grow to see the cruelty of the world - and to accept it - in two very different countries, and in two very different timeframes. One (Afghanistan) is current - one (America) took place in the 1930s.

I could work in the following:

- Read reviews of both books upon their publishing, and have students respond to those reviews and write a review for each.
- Watch the movie for each in the classroom
- Study the language in TKAM, and discuss ways in which language has changed since the 1930s, specifically words and usages that were common then, but are considered unacceptable now
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Unit Plan Launch Party!

OK, so maybe not a launch party, but today I was *terrifically* inspired while doing field experience at Gainesville Middle School. I was overcome with unit plan ideas and took copious notes as thoughts whizzed through my brain!

Until today, I had thought designing a usable unit plan sounded cool; after seeing kids in action, I could see it taking on life.

I have decided to do a 9th grade English unit plan for Black Awareness Month, centering on Huckleberry Finn. I also had the following ideas:

- How word use, and general acceptability, changes over time
- Read about the Underground Railroad, and have students write a short story about what it must have been like to escape using it
- Bring in other authors from that time: Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin), and so on
- Do a character conflict exercise of Huck Finn: right vs. wrong (based on the ideals of the time, and of today)
- Do a "Whats in the Box" of an artifact from that timeframe
- Read something aloud and have kids write a reaction to it in their WNB
- Idioms
- Grammar lesson - how things have changed since the 1860s
- Poetry: read some slavery- or Lincoln-related poetry, and write a poem about it
- Review the words in The Gettysburg Address - talk about the setting, how many people were there, etc.

Don't worry, little bloggy poo

I won't forget about you just because my MGRP is done. I just needed a week off.