This class is designed to provide your student with a full semester of English Language Arts learning. Students will read and analyze five critically acclaimed novels, each from a different genre.  They will be responsible for reading assigned chapters on their own and discussing their thoughts, ideas, and reactions during class.  Our discussions will focus on the protagonist and antagonist, their motivations, the plot, conflict resolution, and theme.  An end-of-novel assignment is given to allow students to exhibit what they learned during the book study.

Here are the five novels as well as plot summaries:

Fiction: Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, by Jordan Sonnenblick.
 "A brave and beautiful story that will make readers laugh, and break their hearts at the same time. Now with a special note from the author! Steven has a totally normal life (well, almost). He plays drums in the All-City Jazz Band (whose members call him the Peasant), has a crush on the hottest girl in school (who doesn't even know he's alive), and is constantly annoyed by his younger brother, Jeffrey (who is cuter than cute - which is also pretty annoying). But when Jeffrey gets sick, Steven's world is turned upside down, and he is forced to deal with his brother's illness, his parents' attempts to keep the family in one piece, his homework, the band, girls, and Dangerous Pie (yes, you'll have to read the book to find out what that is!)." (Amazon.com)

Narrative in Verse: The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander
"'With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,' announces dreadlocked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood. He's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander. Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family." (Amazon.com)

Memoir: The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros. 
"The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes--sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous--Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers" (Amazon.com).

Dystopian: Unwind, by Neal Shusterman
"Connor is a rebel whose unwinding [repurposing a teen’s organs and other body parts in living recipients] was ordered by his parents. Rita, a ward of the state, has been slated for unwinding due to cost cutting. And Lev, his parents’ tenth child, has been destined for unwinding since birth as a religious tithe. As their paths intersect, they start to fight for their own destinies. But do they stand a chance of escaping their fate or proving their lives are worth saving?" (Amazon.com)

Historical Fiction:  The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
"It is 1939, Nazi Germany.  The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement." (Amazon.com)

The reading schedule and assignments are as follows:

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
Meeting 1 -- pp. 1-63
Meeting 2 -- pp. 64-130
Meeting 3 -- pp. 131-205
Meeting 4 -- pp. 206-End
End of book assignment: Choose one scene from the novel and create a cartoon.

The Crossover
Meeting 5 -- pp. 1-85
Meeting 6 -- pp. 86-170
Meeting 7 -- pp. 171-End
End of book assignment: Write a poem using some of the techniques we've studied in this novel.

The House on Mango Street
Meeting 8 -- pp. 1-43
Meeting 9 -- pp. 44-87
Meeting 10 -- pp. 88-130
Meeting 11 -- 131-End
End of book assignment: Write a description or draw your idea of a perfect house.  

Unwind
Meeting 12 -- pp. 1-85
Meeting 13 -- pp. 86-170
Meeting 14 -- pp. 171-255
Meeting 15 -- pp. 256-End
End of book assignment: Develop a playlist for one of the main characters and explain why the character would have each of these songs on their playlist.

The Book Thief:
Meeting 16: Introduction to the Holocaust and to the novel, point of view, characterization of protagonist and supporting characters, foreshadowing (pp. 1-107)
Meeting 17: Introduction to more characters, Kristallnacht -- Night of Broken Glass (pp. 108-222)
Meeting 18: Symbolism, The Hitler Youth (pp. 223-324)
Meeting 19: The Bombing of Cologne, Auschwitz, The Long Walk to Dachau (pp. 325-430)
Meeting 20: End of novel and discussion of theme (pp. 431-550)
End of book assignment:  Create a digital timeline of WWII and the Holocaust, including the significance of each event.

This is a highly interactive class, as students will be expected to share their ideas and analysis of the novels with their fellow students. My role will be to moderate discussion, not lecture. At the end of this course, students will be familiar with five genres and have a better understanding of characterization, plot, and a variety of literary elements.