This class will be a book club, so most of it will be based on student input and discussion.  I will scaffold vocabulary as necessary, and will have discussion questions ready for each class. We will focus on characters, themes, plot, setting and make connections to anything we might see in today's society that resemble the events in the book.  Students will be expected to come with their own questions for each session, and will be expected to participate through speaking or using the chat box. Students will be asked to write a short reader's response to each section they read, and be ready to share them with the class.  There are historical allusions in the book that we will discuss.  Students will need to read about 35 pages per week outside of class. 

We will begin with background information about the characteristics of  dystopian literature and why people write it.  We will compare it to utopias.
In the first class, we will start reading the novel, and I will explain some of the terminology that is initially confusing. We will come up with adjectives to describe Marena, the main character/protagonist. We will discover who/what the antagonist is. 

In each class, we will discuss the events and the characters, from that week's assigned reading.  
We  will talk about how the setting affects the characters, plot and themes.    We will start making lists of what we think the themes might be, using textual references to support our opinions. We will discuss the students' questions, and discuss the questions I will prepare for the students.  We will look at what characteristics of dystopian fiction are present. Students will share their short written responses to that week's reading.