Friday’s empathy activity really helped the students take the time to observe how destructive it can be when people jump to conclusions erroneously.  Thus, today, the students had to put themselves into the place of the two narrators of our books of choice, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and Cassie from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.  When posed with a hypothetical situation, the students had to construct advice to either character.

The instructions and situations were as follows:

• To Kill a Mockingbird:
  • Since Jem is spending more time with Dill, imagine that Scout befriends a young black child around town and they become fast friends. After noticing the odd looks and comments from the people around town when playing with this other child, she writes a letter to the local paper asking for advice.
  • Option A: Write Scout’s question and the paper’s response to her in the form of an advice column.
  • Option B: Write a dialogue between Scout and Calpurnia where Calpurnia provides some advice.
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry:
  • Cassie goes into Strawberry to run errands for Mama. On her way back, she enters a store and is refused service because she is black. Upon returning home, she writes a letter to the local paper asking for advice.  What do you think she would say?
  • Option A: Write Cassie’s question and the paper’s response to her in the form of an advice column.
  • Option B: Write a dialogue between Cassie and Mama where Mama gives Cassie advice. What would she say?

After a moment to share what had been written, the students then had time to read for the remainder of class.

Homework:

• Read for at least 30 minutes and log it in the reading log (check #2 will be on Friday):
  • TKAM- Chapter 12
  • ROTHMC- Chapter 5
• Catch up on any outstanding work or discussion questions.

PowerPoint:

• 3.2.14 Novel Advice Column

Ms. Williams

This post was posted in Learning through Literature, Lessons