Pimp My Unit: The Westing Game

This off-season, I've decided that most of my reading units need an overhaul. They're not awful, but they don't pull things together as well as they could. This unit is for my fifth grade gifted reading class, so it would serve for sharp fifth graders or for sixth graders.

I've spent some time working with the Understanding by Design model, and I like what I see. The question to begin with it, "What do I want my kids to be able to do?"

Enter The Westing Game, one of the most awesome mystery stories from childhood. I've been using it to teach mystery genre, but there's a lot more going on in that book. A whole lot more. There are themes of need, love and redemption running throughout, all of which warrant a closer look.
Oh, yeah,it's also a lot of fun!

What do I want my kids to be able to do? To recognize, as they get ready for middle school, that people's behavior is driven by need, or, more specifically, unmet needs. I want them to see that the need and its ensuing behavior creates cycles,some of which are unhealthy, both in literature and IRL.

So, I set my central theme as 'need' with my understanding as 'Need drives behavior.' Next, what can my kids do at the end, that they couldn't have done before, to show that they get it? I've picked two things:
1. Create a podcast, using the cast of characters of their book club books, in which the main character and important minor characters are interviewed and they explain how a need left them stuck in a cycle and how the cycle was broken.
2. Create a piece of realistic fiction in which the protagonist's behavior shows cyclic patterns of unmet need and breaking that cycle.

The reading I set should lead them to the central understanding, so we're  not reading a bunch of mysteries, but working with text that introduces those cycles.

So, with the Westing Game, I'm pairing:
Jack Prelutsky's haiku, "If Not for the Cat"

with it goes the poetry web I made. Snag it here. They'll also do a vocabulary web with 'scarcity'. Find that here.

Before we move on, I'm going to introduce them to Maslow's Hierarchy of need. Remember that from ed psych? It will help them make sense of what we're seeing as we go. This is almost kid-friendly. I'm going to have to doctor it up just a little before putting it on the riso. I totally get that sexual intimacy is on the hierarchy; I just don't feel like dealing with the giggles.

I've put together a Jacob's Ladder for it. Find it here.

Other poems I'm using:
Langston Hughes' "Harlem"  ( A lot of people know this as "A Dream Deferred") I've created a Jacob's Ladder for it. We'll do a vocabulary web for 'defer'.
Angela Johnson's "The Other Side" we'll do a poetry web with it.
In pairs, the kids will compare and contrast two very different poems about the same idea.

I'm pulling excerpts from:
A Long Walk to Water - Two first person accounts, one, a girl in present-day Sudan, the other from one of the Lost Boys of the '80s. I'll pull the first chapter and have the kids annotate and another excerpt in which the protagonist is torn between giving some of his water to a dying man or to keep it for himself. (His uncle intervenes.) From that, the kids will do a blog post.

Bad Boy: A Memoir  Walter Dean Myers' memoir of growing up in Harlem. I'm pulling two excerpts that show the cyclic pattern of unfulfilled need and behavior and how two teachers helped him to break that cycle.

We'll watch:
God Grew Tired of Us, a documentary about several of the Lost Boys, grow to young men in refugee camps and moving to America. There are a very few small bits I zip past; you might want to preview it before using it.

With younger kids, you could also watch Lilo and Stitch. They're stuck in a behavior rut, too.

Book Club Choices:

 

 Before we wrap up the book clubs to get ready for creating our podcasts, we'll do a Socratic Seminar. The central question will be the central understanding, "How does need drive behavior?" to make sure we're all on the same page-ish before beginning our projects.

I'm scoping out about 25 days for this unit. I think it will lay a good foundation for the rest of the year. 

I hope you find this useful and a new way of thinking about an awesome book. 

Remember to pin this so you can find it again!

 

It's May! What Are You Reading?

Winding down and gearing up at the same time... welcome to North Carolina! Our state tests are truly end-of-grade and have to be given during the last ten days of school. So, of course, we're working on selections, but there's a lot more going on in room 301, too!

It time for mysteries! I save those for last because mysteries require us to use all of our reading powers.

My fifth grade readers are enjoying (immensely)

 

For their book clubs, they've chosen:

Now, there are, of course, more to mysteries than whodunnit, so I'm also working with the universal theme of need. Sam Westing carefully planned his game to fill a need for each of the players. We've taken a look at Maslow's hierarchy and will spend some time focusing on the bottom tiers (Westing Game covers the top.) by annotating a few key chapters of:

 National Geographic has a unit to introduce kids to the book and to the movie about the Lost Boys of Sudan, God Grew Tired of Us, which we'll watch. Our journal entries will focus on the interaction of physical and emotional need. Need leads to conflict, and there's the heart of the story.

Just like fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side. Yes, we watched A New Hope for May the Fourth and did a Hero's Journey plot chart with it. I was surprised by the number of kids that saw The Force Awakens, but not this. My math classes do Pi Day, my reading, May the Fourth. What's the point of being in gifted ed. if you can't geek out a little?

By the way, most of the book club books can be snagged at the Scholastic Warehouse Sale, which should be coming up, at least in my little corner of the world, in a few weeks. Pretty much everything's half off, so this is where I stock up, big-time. Totally worth the trip.

The Focused on Fifth team is linking up to share what we're reading! Curious? Want to add your own? Join in here!

I do hope you are enjoying the last weeks with your kiddos. Having testing so close to the end makes it fly for me, just when I wish it would slow down so I can keep them close before we send them off to middle school. *Sigh* It is a bittersweet thing!

What We're Reading in December

Five days, everyone, five days. We can do this, right? Right??

With the in-and-out of November and December, my fifth graders are still working their way through what we began in November. (Curious? Check that post out here.)

Which is OK, because I'll share with you what I'm doing with my fourthies! Hopefully, you'll still find something new and cool to try with your big kids.

We're about halfway through:

I'm working with the themes of individuality, inner and outer beauty, and unconditional love, so I've paired these close reads with it:
"Remembering", a poem in my Jacob's Ladder comprehension set,
"Beauty and the Beast",  as in the real one, and quite different from the Disney version. It's in my Junior Great Books (set 4A), but you can find the text here.
"Harrison Bergeron", another bit of science fiction, in which people with talents or gifts are purposely handicapped to make everyone equal. More scary for grown-ups (because you can see this happening one day) than for kids. They just get mad. Find it here.
"Tesseract" a webpage describing what a tesseract really is. Find it here.

My fourth grade reading is tiny, so we only have two book clubs:

 

By the way, at least in my town, it's time for the Scholastic Book Clubs Warehouse Sale! Most of the books in the warehouse (and it's an actual warehouse) are half off, so this is when I go and shore up my book club choices. When will your city have one? Find out here. 

Five days, y'all, we got this. 

I hope you and yours have a peaceful, restful, awesome-amazing couple of weeks off! Enjoy it now...winter is coming, my friends. Unless you teach in New Zealand, like our Learning to be Awesome's Erin. She's ready for summer. 

Check out what the other Focused of Fifth collaborators are reading in their classrooms! Just click on the icon below or right here.

Diving in Deeper this November - What We're Reading

Ah... November! Here, in the South, our leaves are finally changing in earnest. Fall happens quickly here. Some years we go from green to gone in a matter of a week or ten days. This year, not so much, what with all the rain. And more rain. And rain after that. The TV anchorguy announced the start of the 6AM news yesterday morning with, "Well, it's another crummy day."

On the upside, it's November. We've all survived the September-October push, gotten to know our classes better, and are ready to start tossing the kids a little meat.

With my fifth grade, I'm wrapping up The View from Saturday, with its twining plotlines and oddball connections, which my kids love exploring, and get into:

This is one of my favorite books to teach. It's got a lot to work with, just with the parallel plots and a couple of wicked plot twists. There's a line of dialogue,  spoken by a heartbroken grandpa at the end, that makes me - widely known as the toughest teacher in school - teary eyed every. single. time. Somehow, the kids think that's awesome.

It's also useful to me, as a fifth grade teacher, because we'll work with the universal theme of rejection and acceptance, one that's good for going-to-middle-school kids to explore. My essential question will be, "How can the fear of rejection create unhealthy patterns of behavior?"

I'm going to be pairing this text with a few close-reads, two fiction and one non-fiction:
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Chanclas by Sandra  Cisneros
Brown v. BOE by Walter Dean Myers

Here are my book club choices to pair with it:

Well, that's what's up for fifth grade in room 301 this month. I'm still waffling on my fourth grade. I wanted to do The Tiger Rising, but I'm having a hard time putting a finger on a universal theme for it.. I might hit A Wrinkle in  Time in the meantime, and focus on order and chaos as a theme, though sacrificial love's a good one, too. I'm hunting for close reading work for both of them.

So what are the other fab Focused on Fifth collaborators up to?
Find out here!

Have an amazing month! The next three go by in just a blink...take time to enjoy them and your kiddos!

What I'm Reading This October

The truth is, not much. I've still got a sixteen year old with a migraine that, after six weeks now, won't die (and stay that way) so between doctor trips and holing up in the dark, I don't get a lot of anything done.

What am I supposed to be reading? Well, this:

 We teachers of Academically/Intellectually Gifted kids in my county are part of a required book study, and this is the text. I'll have to admit that, at first, I was less-than impressed. I have real concerns that this move toward 'text dependence' represents a dumbing-down of curriculum (Don't think; just go fetch the right answer.) and I still think that, used poorly, that's what it becomes.

I've been pleasantly surprised, though. What I've read, so far, has shown that using text dependent questions can, in fact, promote real thinking into text. We are given strategies that take kids well beyond the literal, but stay within a TDQ framework. The book doesn't read like a textbook, with a much less formal vibe and down-to-earth examples.

I've got a lot more reading to do, but already, I've changed my attitude toward this type of work from, "Yippee! Let's raise some convergent, low-level thinkers that'll make great sheep when they grow up." to "Maybe this does have a place in my classroom."  It's a start.

What am I reading with my classes? That's a different story. I teach a lot of my skills through read-aloud with accountable talk and follow up with book clubs. I teach reading twice a day, once with fourth grade and once with fifth. Both groups just finished our first read-alouds (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH  and Crispin: The Cross of Lead respectively) and we're cruising into:

Fourth:

This is where we'll begin to look closely at character: identifying and supporting character traits, how those traits both create problems and equip characters to solve them, and how relationships play out throughout a text. 

For fifth:

For plot, we'll focus on how the individual stories intertwine (and how so many lead back to one minor character, which is weird.) For character, we'll look at different types of characters (flat, round, sympathetic, static, dynamic.) This has a good variety of those.

Plus, I love reading how the snobby admin.-type refers to himself as an ed-you-cat-or, as opposed to the warmth the kids' teacher, Mrs. Olinski, exudes. 

So, what are my awesome, bloggy friends reading these days? Click the button below to stop by the Focused on Fifth site and find out. Share what you're reading, too; it's a linky party!