Designing+Your+Own+Curriculum




 * Objectives: **
 * Analyze author purpose
 * Analyze character development
 * Analyze historical context

**How it works: ** 1. You pick your books: novels (fiction), biographies, plays, histories, etc. Choose books you will enjoy - you will be spending some time on them! The goal will be to read approximately 80 pages per week. There are several ways to approach this:  2. You read the first 40 pages, writing a one paragraph summary for every 10 pages. 3. You create a reading syllabus for the first book. This includes how many pages you will read a day/night AND what you will do to illustrate your understanding of the reading. The goal is to consider what you have learned about the world of your book in the first 40 pages and choose what the best option would be for your book.
 * You can choose a theme, such as books from an historical time period, or books from the same genre (romance, dystopia, urban, etc.), or a wide variety.
 * You can choose to work independently or to create a book club of several of your peers - this can be students in your class or in other periods.

//Options //**: ** 4. Read the book, following the syllabus you designed (reading the designated number of pages and completing the written activity you chose). 5. Design a culminating project that examines the **author’s purpose** (theme), **the character development**, and the **historical context** (the setting of the book AND the time period when the author wrote it). The culminating activity may include one or multiple of the following options, but it must cover all three of the components bolded above. //Options //**: **
 * write daily summaries of the reading,
 * create a journal from one of the character’s point of view and keep a diary with the daily readings,
 * record a one-minute summary in GarageBand
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">sketch out a storyboard for how the reading might look if it were a movie
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">maintain a blog that reflects on what you read - what you liked, what confused you, etc.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">write a song (the lyrics) for each chapter
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a scrapbook using cut up magazines or pictures online (organize in iPhoto) that includes captions for each chapter
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a study guide that asks future readers questions about the important parts of the chapters.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a faux interview with the author using iMovie
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a movie trailer that includes important scenes
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a website other students could use to study
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a newspaper that has an interview with the author, review of the book, and article about the historical contexts
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">create a slideshow presentation using Prezi
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">watch the movie version and write an essay that juxtaposes how they both present the 3 components

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">6. For each subsequent book, you will again create a reading schedule (see step 2), but you will choose a different option for the written assignments (step 2) while reading AND choose a different culminating activity (step 4). <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">7. At the end of the nine weeks, you will give a brief presentation of the books you read to your peers with a recommendation about the books.


 * Dates to Remember **