Before reading, we read picture books to practice looking for themes in stories. For example, in Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, students identified the theme of identity, and the author's message to always be yourself. Students practiced writing their ideas including the title, author, short summary, and then their claim about the theme with evidence from the text.
Students also took a pre-assessment with the short story The Lottery. Their responses put them into different groups to focus on comprehension, using evidence from the text, identifying theme, and identifying themes across texts using another short story, Tough Alice. Finally, students took a post assessment with the short story Harrison Bergeron. Students will also be reading All Summer in a Day, so they will have many dystopian mentor texts under their belts to use and think about when writing their literary essays.
Ask your child to share their writer's notebook with you. They should have notes on setting, mood and tone, and archetypes, as well as their thoughts on picture book themes and Tough Alice. Their dystopian novel book choice should have lots of sticky notes marking where they have read important plot points, character change, setting descriptions, mood words, etc. They will use all this hard work when they write their essays!
