After more than thirty years in education, our English IV teacher retired last year. While she graciously left her lesson plans and resources, her absence has left a gap in our curriculum. As a result, the English IV curriculum is Under Construction.
As a curriculum nerd in my heart, I love the opportunity to dive into a course and evaluate what’s working and what can be improved. There’s something clarifying about aligning standards, assessments, and best practices.
In reworking the English IV curriculum, one goal is to provide teachers with some flexibility in the class novel and instructional strategies they choose. With the class novel, they can feature book clubs, literature circles, or guided reading.
Over the years, I’ve tried countless strategies in teaching a class novel, so I wanted to spotlight 6 engaging activities that work for any book.
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Simple Class Novel Strategies
First, I always appreciate an anticipation guide to kick off a class novel! Typically, I give students 8-10 minutes to complete the anticipation guide independently. Then, students chat with a partner about the first statement on the guide before rotating to a new partner to discuss the next statement and so on. Throughout the class novel, we revisit the anticipation guide to see if our opinions have changed. A well-developed anticipation guide should plant breadcrumbs for students and should provide opportunities for thematic discussion.
Grab one of my favorite (and free) anticipation guides:
While anticipation guides are a good way to start conversation about a class novel, silent discussions are a fantastic way to extend the discussion as students move into the heart of the novel. A silent discussion encourages students to share their thoughts and opinions in a low-stakes situation. I also enjoy using silent discussions across classes so students in one period can learn from students in another class. As students continue writing about their reading, they can also revisit a silent discussion board for ideas and inspiration.
Task cards are one of the most flexible tools to use during class novel study. Task cards can be assigned as bell work or exit tickets; a trail of task cards can be the entire lesson. Task cards can be used for individuals, partners, or groups. Plus, it’s easy to differentiate with task cards because you can “stack” the deck to meet a student’s specific needs and goals. These are some of my favorite task cards that work for any novel:
- Plot and Conflict Task Cards
- Characterization Task Cards
- Defining Heroism Task Cards
- Figurative Language Task Cards
Promote Deeper Thinking
As students get closer to the end of the novel, I want to encourage them to think deeply about the text, including making connections across the text. These three instructional strategies promote critical thinking:
First, close reading is near and dear to my heart. Oftentimes, we associate close reading with shorter texts like poems and essays, but close reading can allow students to dive into crucial moments from their class novel or drama. Depending on the scene you choose to highlight, you can target a specific standard or theme. An effective close reading can also lay the foundation for an essay! Here are some of my favorite passages for close reading with students:
- Atticus’ courtroom speech in To Kill a Mockingbird is a perfect place to look at how a speaker develops and supports an argument.
- Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar works well for evaluating rhetorical choices!
- The digressions in Beowulf are also worth close reading, especially if you’re evaluating how a text represents the cultural and historical contexts in which it was written and shared.
- Ikemefuna’s death in Things Fall Apart is well worth a close reading, especially since the scene overlaps with so many powerful allusions.
- The opening of Heart of Darkness was made for close reading. It establishes so many motifs for the novel, and if you skip over it too quickly, you shortchange your later reading.
Second, one of my favorite culminating activities is a Book Cover Design Project. There’s a lot of variety you can include when students design a new book cover for their class novel. This works particularly well with a class novel that has lots of symbolism like The Great Gatsby. Here are some ways to create variety and hit several standards in this project:
- Ask students to write an essay discussing the choices they made for their book cover and to connect each choice to evidence from the text.
- In addition to a book cover, students can write the inner flaps of a book cover, including a summary and an About the Author section.
- Oftentimes, contemporary novels include a Questions for Book Clubs section, and students can write the questions and answer keys in this section.
- To practice speaking and listening standards, students can also present their book covers to their classmates.
Finally, I have to mention Literary Analysis Stations. This is one of my favorite instructional strategies when we’re reading a class novel. I appreciate the flexibility of stations, the dialogue among students, and the variety of ways I can assess their understanding. Some of the strategies I mentioned earlier can also be adapted into stations:
- Students can revisit their anticipation guide during stations and track a statement’s development throughout the text, creating a quote log.
- Task cards can be their own station, and you can require students to address a specific set or number of task cards.
- Providing a passage for close reading can be a station, too. Teachers can copy one passage with each student getting a copy to annotate, or you can post a chart paper with the passage and students can collaboratively provide a close reading.
- Designing an alternative book cover could also be its own station although this wouldn’t be as elaborate as the complete project. Students could create their book cover individually or with partners. They could even hang them and vote on which book cover best represents the class novel!
- These are my favorite Literary Analysis Stations!
