A Girl Named Disaster Short Lesson Plan
Week one (first ½ hour):
What you eat directly affects the quality of your life, as well as the quality of life of others. Think about how this works.
3 minutes: Free write on food and diet
2 minutes: Share and discuss a little
10 minutes: Discuss Nhamo’s diet in different stages of her trip. Have each student make a menu for Nhamo in the following stages/locations (have group think these up and list them):
• In her village
• On the Long Teats’ island
• Dry season of the big island
• Wet season on the big island
• In Zimbabwe
10 minutes: Share lists and discuss
10 minutes: Read some articles about diet, sustainability, well-being, how food affects mood
5 minutes: Give homework assignment for next week
Homework assignment:
Keep a written record of your own diet for two days
Make a flow chart of where this food came from and how far it has traveled
• This might take some research (asking grocery clerks, reading packages, internet)
• Guess if you are not sure
Log onto TED.com and search “food.” Watch one video that interests you and come prepared to discuss video
Week two (second ½ hour):
25 minutes (5 minutes each): Share your record, your results and what you learned from TED
5 minute discussion: What have we learned from this? How does this information affect us?
5 minutes: evaluation of teacher and lesson
Lesson Objectives:
Students should recognize how Nhamo’s diet changed throughout the book and understand why the author put so much emphasis on food. Students should internalize the importance of food choice and become more aware in their own lives of the decisions they make on a regular basis, particularly of the affects their daily choices make on society and the environment.
Teaching Speak:
A Four Week Lesson Plan
Our group was fortunate to write a unit plan for the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. From the beginning, we made certain choices regarding how we wanted to approach creating this unit. Our first step, and the most important part of our approach to this novel, was coming up with what we considered to be the main theme of the novel: relationships. To begin our approach, we then created a guiding question that connects our students to the novel: In what ways are we affected by the different kinds of relationships in our lives? We want students to be reflective about the text and their own lives, so we chose activities that challenge their understanding of the text and themselves. Once activities were chosen we looked at the different benchmarks and decided the ones that best suited the majority of our lessons were benchmarks I-A, I-C, II – B, III-F and IX-B. These seemed to coincide nicely with the variety of activities we had chosen, by looking at a wide variety of English skills.
Our unit was created for ninth graders in a regular Language Arts class in APS, but can easily be modified for other grades. Eight graders would be able to get a lot out of the unit; however, it is our belief that the older students would find it more relatable, especially because of the seriousness of the topic. We chose ninth graders as our target audience because they are just beginning high school. These students have a lot in common with the narrator in Speak, who is also just beginning high school. Part of our excitement when approaching this text is the role of the narrator in the story. Ninth graders automatically have an opportunity to relate to the protagonist because they are the same age. This allows the readers to create a personal connection with the narrator, which is continually fostered throughout the unit.
The book is already divided into four sections, or grading periods. This helps us break the story into four week periods. Each section has about 50 pages, which can be split up to ten pages a day. This reading will be done in class, as will all the activities associated with the unit. We will use different reading strategies to help students understand the book. Some days the teacher will read aloud, some days the students will read in small groups, and some days they will read silently by themselves. By giving students a lot of variety in the way they read, we hope to keep their interest and allow them to strengthen their weaker reading techniques. We have also selected activities that build on the student’s prior knowledge throughout the unit, which will also encourage the students to connect the book to their own lives, and then dig deeper.
We also decided to select a few core activities the students will revisit weekly during the unit. They will do a vocabulary unit once a week to define unfamiliar words in their reading. The students will also create a journal which they will record most of their activities in and have an opportunity to do some personal writing connected with the book once a week. Mystery Envelopes is another activity we chose to repeat weekly. This activity gives the students prompts for discussion. By having a schedule and revisiting these activities, we are hoping to give students a routine they can feel comfortable with during the unit. This will strengthen our classroom community.
One of the final aspects of our approach was that we decided it was really important to leave a few days empty from activities. The main purpose for this was we realized that with the sensitive content of the book and the wide variety of activities, it might be nice to ensure ourselves the leeway of not trying to cram everything into one day, just because our schedule tells us to. It provided us the flexibility to continue with a project that we may find needs more attention, lends itself to the freedom of class discussion, or even just to keep in consideration that things sometimes come up.
Throughout the novel, we propose activities that will allow the students to compare the narrator’s life, choices, and ideas to their own. We will look specifically at the relationships between Melinda (the narrator) and her teachers, her friends, her parents, and boys. All of these relationships are significant to Melinda and to ninth graders. The changes occurring in young teens’ lives often create difficult encounters and rocky relationships. We want our students to journey with Melinda through her first year in high school and to be able to learn from her actions. We also want our students to realize they are not going through these difficult times alone, but instead are accompanied by the whole freshman class. It is our goal to abate the feelings of insecurity and loneliness while also improving our students’ critical thinking skills. Along with this general goal, we have also targeted specific standards that will be covered throughout the unit.
Standards
A variety of standards are approached in different lessons in the unit. For instance Benchmark II-B, which asks a student to demonstrate control of Standard English through correct grammar usage, is used in the activity Plug-Ins. Benchmark III-F, used in the Savoring Powerful Language exercise, reads: Pose relevant questions; listen with civility to the ideas of others; extract essential information from others’ input; build on the ideas of others and contribute relevant information and ideas in group discussion; gain the floor in a respectful way; define individuals’ roles and set clear goals, acknowledging ideas and contributions of others in the group. As the Savoring Powerful Language exercise involves group work in which each students needs to present a passage and the reasons why they find the language in their selection to be special, beautiful, or powerful, each student will occupy the role of listener and speaker. The exercise also allows the students to provide feedback in the form of either comments or questions, as per the rules of the classroom. This activity could also cover Benchmark IX-B, which discusses recognizing time sequence, literary plot devices, mood and the use of figurative language.
In the activity Sentence Starters, students will cover Benchmark I-C, which looks at demonstrating critical thinking skills to evaluate information and solve problems. Sentence Starters will lead them to look more critically at the work and eventually solve their own confusions through discussion and further research. Benchmark I-A was also represented in our unit through the Mining the Levels of Reflection Activity. This is because the benchmark asks that students to think about the voice of the narrator and also find an appreciation for the significance of the account of events within the novel. In this activity students are asked to reflect on the text and find what it means to them personally and extend their comprehension to what it means universally.
Conclusion
It is our belief that we created a unit that works hard to encourage both reflective and analytical thinking on behalf of our students. Our assignments worked to enhance the understanding of the novel to have students realize the importance of different types of relationships. It is our hope that students will walk away from this unit feeling a new found appreciation for those who try to make a positive difference in their lives and understanding how their own interactions affect others.
Activities
Journaling Workshop Activity #1
As students read Speak, ask them to keep a reflection journal. This will be done in a spiral notebook to keep everything in chronological order. Each chapter will have different prompts that the students will write about. The journals should contain a number of writings by the end of the book. Although each prompt will be different, the overarching purpose of this journal is to gain a deeper understanding of relationships within Speak by considering the issues presented in the book and applying them to the students’ own lives. Another purpose of this journaling activity is to help students gain the skills to communicate their personal thoughts and experiences through writing. After our writing sessions, students will either be asked if they want to share their journal entries with the class, or they may share their entries with their neighbors. These entries will not be graded on content, only on completion. At the end of the journal, the students will select two of their favorite writings to be read and commented on.
Some of the journaling prompts include:
• Looking at the cover of the book and writing a response.
• Discuss your own room at home. Is it like Melinda’s room? What does your room say about you as a person, if anything?
• What are your Thanksgiving traditions? How do these activities bring you family together or push them apart?
• Melinda shows us her report card at the end of each grading period. What does a report card really say about a student?
• Was being a child better than being a teenager? In what ways? In what ways is it better to be older? Why is it hard to be in-between childhood and adulthood? (p. 99)
Melinda’s father explains to her that the arborists are cutting off disease and damage to make it possible for the tree to grow again. How can the pruning of the tree be compared to Melinda’s life? (page 187)
• Have you ever felt like there were two “yous” fighting inside of you? (page 132)
The Word Game Activity #2
As students enter the classroom, they will see a word from Speak written on the board. We are modifying this activity in that instead of taking a word from the chapter the students were suppose to have read, we will be using the word ‘speak’ before even starting the book. It is intended as a hook to get students wondering and thinking about the text. With ‘speak’ written on the board, the class will be asked what the word means to them. Answers will be written on the board and recorded in their journals.
Gallagher suggests this is a good activity for warming up the students’ minds before deeper discussion may take place.
Vocab Activity #3
For the vocabulary part of this unit, the class will get a list of words four times during the book: at the beginning, then after the first three ‘report cards’ Melinda receives. There are about 30 vocabulary words, so each list will contain about 7 words. The students will predict what these words mean and will keep their predictions in order to update them when they come across the word while reading. Many of the students will read over these words and not find them in the text, so as a class we will discuss the words and give the students the page numbers where they are located. Students will update their predictions based on how the word is used in the text. Finally, they will write the correct definitions of the words, and they will create a new sentence using each word.
Mystery Envelopes Activity #4
Students are asked to get into groups and are then given a ‘mystery envelope’ that contains an index card with a question for the group to answer. All the groups may have the same question, or each group may have a different question to explore. As a group, they will formulate an answer using examples from the reading for support. When all groups are done, the class will come back together as a whole and share their group’s answer. Students are expected to take notes as a group shares. Here are some example questions:
• What is the single most important word in this chapter? Why?
• Which character has changed the most so far? Is the change good or bad? What caused this change?
• What lesson(s) have we learned from a specific character?
• Why did we read this book? What value does it hold for the modern reader?
• What techniques did the author use in this chapter to hold the reader’s interest?
• What is the central theme of this passage/chapter/book?
Sentence Starters (Pg. 70) Activity #5
This activity is designed to discover where student comprehension begins to break down and have them work through it. The first half of the book Speak is riddled with mysteries regarding the main character’s actions and motivations. Students ultimately get more time to reflect on anything they are having difficulty understanding by completing a series of sentences. As a class we can start to find answers or decipher if it is an area that might be better explained by reading further in the text. Some of the questions to consider for students to answer are:
I don't understand...
I noticed...
I wonder...
I was reminded of...
I think…
I’m surprised that…
I’d like to know…
I realized…
If I were…
The central issue(s) is (are)…
One consequence of __________ could be…
If ______________, then…
I’m not sure…
Although it seems…
Once students have been given a few of these as a prompt, a class discussion can ensue, or even small group discussions, to see if anyone else might be able to solve the confusion of the others.
The Envelope Please! Activity #6
Part way into the novel, students are asked to predict the ending in a paragraph outlining what they believe will happen and their reasons for thinking this. Students may do this in a variety of ways—as a straight-forward essay, as a letter to Melinda, or as a letter from Melinda to another character in the book. The idea behind this is to help students pay attention to the text as they develop their observational and critical thinking skills. The envelopes are collected and handed back prior to the final chapter of the book so that the students can compare what they thought would happen to the actual events in the text. They are then asked to review what they guessed wrong and what they guessed was right, reviewing the text in the process in order to support their ideas. This may be done verbally as a class, as smaller groups, or as an individual written assignment.
Iceberg Activity #7
Metaphors are used around us every day, but they can be a difficult concept for students to understand. The Iceberg activity serves as a graphic organizer to help students understand the concept behind metaphors. Students will use the metaphor of an iceberg to analyze the main character, Melinda. They will write either individually or together as a class about the ‘surface’ of her personality first. If done as a class, an iceberg graphic will be drawn on the board (or projected) and Melinda’s surface and hidden characteristics, as pointed out by the students, will be written either above the waterline or below. Characteristics that go above the waterline should be how other characters in the book view her personality. Items that go below the waterline are Melinda’s traits that she hides from her friends, teachers, and family. Students should decide what goes where through disciplined discussion. As the students progress through the novel, their icebergs may be added to as they realize that how others see Melinda and what her personality is really like are not the same.
Positive and Negative Chart Activity #8 (pp. 98-100)
When the students have progressed far enough into the book to be able to understand the characters and their actions, they will create a Positive and Negative Chart for Melinda. The charts have a nice graphic quality to them, as well as a +10/-10 axis for measuring the actions of Melinda (or another character). There are two types of charts students may chose from or that you may assign. The first maps the positive versus the negative behavior a character exhibits. The second type of chart measures the positive or negative influence other characters have on Melinda. Students explore the actions of other characters from Speak to decide what effect their actions have on the main character, Melinda. From here, students can then decide what the most positive action is and what the most negative action is, as well as how these actions influence Melinda. From here the students can decide what the character's high and low points are in the novel. This activity will stimulate class or group discussions about the text.
Savoring Powerful Language Activity #9 (From Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles, pp. 190-192)
This lesson starts with the class as a group and then breaks the class into smaller groups for a discussion about the material. As a group, the instructor picks a passage from a book to model to the class. The passage offered in the example is from Maniac McGee. After reading the passage, students are asked “How did that language strike you?” After a few minutes of discussion, students are broken into smaller groups and given the instructions:
1. Look for some passages of great language in Speak
2. Each member reads their passage out loud and discuss “What makes this language special, beautiful, or powerful?”
3. Chose a passage to share with the class toward the end of the period
The language in Speak is often very colorful and delightful. Melinda’s voice lends itself well to this activity as it is at times sarcastic and poignant. It also encourages class community and reviews passages from the text. Students should start to see how important the use of language is within a text.
Paragraph Plug-Ins Activity #10
Paragraph Plug-Ins is an exercise designed to get students to reflect about a text. They appear as
a page from Mad-Libs, where the students fill-in blanks in a paragraph about the text, in this case
Speak. The blanks may not only recap important story points, but may also cover topics like
theme and atmosphere, resulting in lower and higher order thinking. For Speak, a plug-in may
read like:
Melinda’s friends treat her ________, making Melinda feel ________. Melinda retreats to her closet which represents ________.
You may add prompts to the blanks, such as noun, verb, or adjective. Kelly Gallagher (2004) suggests that as “students proceed in the text, the paragraphs can gradually be withdrawn, then eventually eliminated” (p. 100). The paragraphs maybe done with small groups of students as a way to stimulate discussion or individually to jump start their minds. Early on in the class period, this may be used as a warm-up exercise to get the students minds stimulated and on task.
Self-Reflective Book Covers Activity #11
Students will be asked to reflect why the cover of this book appears the way it does and what it tells us about the book. Some questions that will be discussed are:
• Why is it important that the book says ‘Speak’ on the title and then has a picture of an eye?
• What does the word ‘Speak’ really tell us?
• How does that title automatically give us an idea of what the book might be about?
• How does the cover and the title work together in giving us an idea about the books content?
• At this point in the novel, why do we think the author chose to use this word as the title?
After talking about this, students will brainstorm how they would or wouldn't change the cover to represent the story to make it more accurate to their own perception of the story. From this point, we would discuss what things we might put on the cover of a book about our own lives. Students will then be given materials to make a self-reflective book cover about their own lives. What they put on it is up to them, but they must keep in mind that these will be shared, even possibly displayed to the rest of the class.
Mining the Levels of Reflection Activity #12
This section talks about pushing students to move beyond the self and into deeper levels of reflection. Students naturally ask themselves, “What does this text mean to me?” But we want them to think about and ask themselves questions such as:
• What this book means in terms of my family?
• What does this book mean in terms of my peers?
• Why should people my age be concerned with the issues presented in this book?
• What does this book mean about the human condition?
• What can I learn about humanity from reading this text?
• What are the universal truths it contains?
After finishing any major work, students can be asked to complete a “Most Valuable Idea” Chart (Found on page 160) and ask the question, “What is the most valuable idea that can be taken from this book?”
Specific Roles Activity #13
This activity consists of assigning specific roles to students and then allowing them to engage in discussion as small groups and may be used throughout the unit. The roles are taken from Harvey Daniels Literary Cirlces and include a discussion director who develops discussion questions and facilitates discussion, a literary luminary who finds special passages within a text, an illustrator who creates visual representations, ect. Allow the students to choose what role they will fulfill. Students will take five minutes to prepare themselves for their individual roles as some roles require certain supplies and some limited preparation.
Be warned that this activity should be used to help encourage students to share their ideas and observations about a work. If they become rigid in their roles, or do not have difficulty sharing as a complete group, the roles are unnecessary and could hinder learning.
Speak Calendar
We decided to spend an entire month reading Speak. Each week is broken up into the four different “grading periods” in the book. This also divides the pages pretty evenly throughout the weeks. Each week the students will read about 50 pages, which breaks down to ten pages a day. We decided to do vocabulary and Mystery Envelope discussions once a week, so four times throughout the unit.
Speak Calendar
Week 1 Pages 1-46
Day 1
Begin unit with an explanation and creation of a journal the students will keep throughout their reading. The first two journaling activities are framing activities. The word “speak” will be written on the board when students enter the classroom. The students will be prompted to write in their journal about what the word “speak” means to them. Students will then look at the cover of the book and write a response. The prompt will include questions like: What do you think the book is about? What questions come into your mind about the book? If there is time, we will begin reading the book.
Day 2
We will introduce vocabulary for the first fourth of the book and discuss how the vocab will be done throughout the unit. Then we will do our reading.
Day 3
Today we will start out with reading ten pages and then move on to the Mystery Envelope activity. Students will get into groups and answer questions, looking back at what they have read so far (the first 30 pages). This activity will help student return to the text in meaningful ways.
Day 4
Reading.
Day 5
Reading. The students will complete the Sentence Starters activity. The beginning of Speak is full of mysteries and unanswered questions. This activity helps students stay involved in the story and not give up due to lack of understanding. This also helps students look back critically at what they have read so far. Students will complete sentences that start out with phrases like, “I don’t understand….” And “I wonder…”
Week 2 Pages 46-92
Day 6
After the daily reading, students will complete the activity the Envelope Please. This writing activity will give students an opportunity to document their predictions about how the book will end. This lesson helps students look critically at what they have already read to make inferences about what they expect will happen.
Day 7
Reading. The class will review the last vocab unit and the next vocab unit will be presented. A new journal prompt will be given. The class will have time to write a response followed by a discussion.
Day 8
Reading. Today we will be doing the second installment of Mystery Envelopes. We will be using different prompts than last week.
Day 9
After our daily reading, student will work on the Iceberg activity. This graphic organizer helps students think critically about Melinda’s character in the story. Not only will they document the surface of her character, but also what she hides from her friends and family. We hope this activity will encourage students to think about themselves and about their own layered personalities.
Day 10
Reading. Today the students will look at powerful language in the book and do the Savoring Powerful Language Activity. This is a good time to discuss Melinda’s sarcasm and the role in plays in the telling of her story.
Week 3 Pages 92-137
Day 11
After the daily reading, students will complete a Positive/Negative chart for Melinda. Since we were already looking at Melinda’s character last week, this activity should force the class to look deeper and think more about her character.
Day 12
After reading today we will present the new Vocab words for the last fourth of the book and review the last vocab unit. We will also do the Specific Roles activity. Since we have been discussing characterization so much recently, the students should have a good grip on the roles in the book. This activity also allows students to examine the relationships Melinda has with the other characters.
Day 13
Reading. Today we will do a third Mystery Envelope activity. The students should be using this time to dive deeper into the text, taking a critical look at what they have read so far. Another journal prompt will also be given today.
Day 14
Reading. Then students will do the Paragraph Plug-ins activity. This will help students take a deeper look at the reading they have done, as well as help students connect the book to their lives and understand it in a broader way.
Day 15
After the reading today, students will complete the Personal Book Cover activity. The student will revisit the cover of the book and then create a new book cover that represents the story of their own lives.
Week 4 Pages 137-200
Day 16
Today we will spend most of the time reading.
Day 17
We will finish reading the book today and review the final vocabulary words. The class will also discuss what they thought of the ending. We will write in the journals with a third prompt today.
Day 18
Today we will do a final Mystery Envelope activity. We will discuss questions like, “What is the central theme of the book?” This will let students think about the text as a whole and connect it to their own lives.
Day 19
We will do the activity Levels of Reflection today. This activity encourages students to look past their own connection with the book and contemplate what the book means on a larger scale –like what the book means in terms of their peers, or how it expresses universal truths. The students will be asked to create a “Most Valuable Idea” Chart.
Day 20
On the last day of the unit, we will open the Prediction Envelopes students wrote at the beginning of the book. The class will also revisit the Positive/Negative character chart they made for Melinda. These activities should bring closure to the book and allow a transition into an explanation of the final project.
References
Daniels, H., & Steineke, N. (2004). Mini-lessons for literature circles. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.
Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper reading. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Tatum, A. W. (2008). Adolescents and texts. English Journal, 98(2), 82-85.
Goebel, B. A. (2009). Comic relief: engaging students through humor writing. English Journal, 98(6), 38-43.
Lindblom, K. (2007). Teaching english in the world. English Journal, 96(4), 102-105.
