A Language Arts Study of the First Harry Potter Book

By using the second Harry Potter book as an anchor text, students will be taught essential standards for Language Arts.  It is helpful if students have already read this book, but a reading schedule will be attached for students who have not or who wish to refresh their memory of the novel.  During this course, students will be taught and practice the following literary skills: reading comprehension, critical thinking, literary devices, thesis statement writing, writing organization, short answer writing skills, and using evidence from the text to support claims.  This class will follow skills learned in a typical 7th - 9th grade Language Arts classroom and will be the equivalent of one quarter of a traditional school year. 

During the course of the class, students will interact with each other via Nearpod, Kahoot, brainstorming activities, and shared ideas that explore topics such as characterization, plot development, and theme. Students will also collaborate on peer editing for their final essay as well as on comprehension check, open book style quizzes throughout each unit.  The teacher will provide thought provoking questions, guidance, feedback, and literature circle-style discussions. 

The class will be segmented into units, which will correspond with each week of the class.  The first two units will cover basic literary skills and devices by highlighting and analyzing them in the text.  The skills include characterization, foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, idioms, and other figurative language. Students will learn the definitions of these terms and then find and analyze examples of them in the text.

The third unit will cover plot development. Students will learn the contents of a story arc and apply this knowledge to an analysis of the plot laid out in the book. These skills include introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

The fourth unit will cover using details from the book and going back to analyze text to answer critical thinking questions. Students will learn best practices for writing a short answer to a reading comprehension question (often found on standardized tests) by using details from the text to support their own inferences.

The fifth unit will expand on the information covered in the third unit by expanding from short answers to longer essays. The students will begin by learning the important strategies and writing techniques essential to essay writing.

The sixth unit will focus on theme. Students will learn what theme is and how it is developed in the novel. They will explore different themes presented in the book and identify key moments that build the theme. Students will work on being able to express this through writing. 

The seventh unit will be an opportunity for students to bring together everything they've learned in class up to that point. The teacher will provide an essay prompt focusing on the development of theme in the novel. Students will need to brainstorm ideas, go back and find details to support their claims in the book, and organize the information into a cohesive essay.  During this unit, the teacher will be teaching skills necessary to accomplish this task, including thesis statement development and organization of ideas in writing. 

The final unit will be a revision of their final essay. Students will learn revision techniques and put those into practice as they polish the final draft of their essay based on the novel. Students will submit their essay for review and be given a rubric for grading.