Wintergirls
Laurie Halse Anderson
5 Different Ways – For Teachers
Classroom Plans
General Standard: Use standard language when debating about eating disorders, dealing with different opinions and points of view.
General Objective: In the end of five classes of about one hour and twenty minutes students should:
· Identify the most important points of the book Wintergirls,
· Connect the most important topics with their previous knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.
· Use vocabulary correctly to debate the topic giving opinion and considering different perspectives.
· Write reader response journals answering the questions:
§ What do you notice?
§ What do you question?
§ What do you feel?
§ What do you relate to?
· Produce videos about their analysis of the book.
· Participate on the blog, answering or making questions and writing their analysis of the book.
General Objective: In the end of five classes of about one hour and twenty minutes students should:
· Identify the most important points of the book Wintergirls,
· Connect the most important topics with their previous knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.
· Use vocabulary correctly to debate the topic giving opinion and considering different perspectives.
· Write reader response journals answering the questions:
§ What do you notice?
§ What do you question?
§ What do you feel?
§ What do you relate to?
· Produce videos about their analysis of the book.
· Participate on the blog, answering or making questions and writing their analysis of the book.
Sub-objectives: Students will analyze the grammar topics used by the writer for a better understanding of the book. Students will improve their specific vocabulary about anorexia and bulimia.
Key vocabulary: Health, Family, Bulimia, Anorexia, Eating Disorders.
Materials: Book “Wintergirls” by Laurie H Anderson, Site: eatinndisorders.weebly.com, videos presented on the site and reports made by the students themselves.
Class 1
Objectives: In the end of the class students should be able to discuss topics like anorexia and bulimia considering what they know about the subject and giving their opinions on a critical way considering the video they watched about Isabelle Caro. Students should also make predictions of what the book Wintergirls is going to be about and what they expect the main character, Lia, is going to be like (personality and appearance). Students should also start using the blog presented on the site to comment and ask questions in English.
Key vocabulary: Eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, diet, health problem, drugs.
Grammar and vocabulary studied: adjectives and expressions to describe personality and appearance in English.
Material: Videos about Isabelle Caro presented on the site (eatinndisorders.weebly.com), book Wintergirls, dictionaries, notebooks.
Procedure: The students should organize themselves into Literature Circles. Students will receive a hand-out explaining what Literature Circles are and how to work properly on them. (Attached File number 1).
Students will decide to whom they are going to work with during all the activities related to the book that will come. They will make groups of three or four students.
At first the teacher will check what the students think of themselves in terms of appearance and personality answering the question: How would you describe yourself?
Students will probably need to revise vocabulary like adjectives and expressions. If so, the teacher may revise this content using ten to fifteen minutes. (Slides about appearance – Attached File 2)
Then, in groups, students should debate the following questions:
§ Are you happy with your body? If not, why aren`t you satisfied?
§ What does it mean to be perfect for you?
§ When you get anxious or nervous do you lose the appetite or do you eat to feel better?
§ Do you get upset when you feel you have just eaten too much? Why do you think it happens?
§ Do you think that being thin or skinny represents perfection? Why (not)? Explain.
§ Do you think friendship can influence the way a person feels about oneself? How?
§ How important is family to make a person happy or miserable?
These questions will be on the walls of the classroom and the students should walk around debating each one of them with their groups. There will be around 4 minutes for each question. They will move when the teacher rings a bell until all the groups have discussed all the questions.
Now students will debate the most important points to the whole class. (Around 5 minutes)
The teacher may help the class discussion by raising some questions like: Have you heard any interesting consideration from your friends? Which questions did you find more interesting to discuss? Why?
The teacher will now access the site and then show students the two videos about Isabelle Caro. If the teacher and students judge necessary, the videos can be presented one more time, so the students can take more notes this second time.
In their groups, students will debate which the most important facts presented on the videos and what they thought about each one of them. In this part they can start answering the question they are supposed to work in the group discussions.
§ What do you notice?
§ What do you question?
§ What do you feel?
§ What do you relate to?
Then, the teacher will show the book Wintergirls, which is going to be used on the next five weeks and ask what information they expect to find in the book considering what they have been talking during the class. In the groups they should list what their expectations would be concerning to vocabulary or even grammar structures used and they should make predictions about how the main character would be using the vocabulary studied previously. Then, they should present the character they imagined that would be on the book to the class.
In the Literature Circles, each member of the group will be responsible in organizing a part of the discussions that will happen until the end of the reading (They have already received the hand out explaining their tasks). There will be four different tasks to be divided: The Discussion Director (responsible for raising important points of the book by asking questions to the group), The Literary Luminary (he will choose quotes which he judges important for a better comprehension of the text), The Connector (he will be responsible to connect the reading with different aspects of life, it can be films, songs, other books, etc.), The Illustrator (he is responsible for drawing what he thinks is the key image for that part of the book). If the groups have five members, the last one can be The Summarizer (the one responsible for enclosing the story and concluding what have been discussed so far).
Extra-activity: If there is extra time left. The teacher may consider reading the beginning of the book out loud to the students. Only the first chapter and each student should make a question to the teacher related to what he has just read.
Homework: Students should read the first 20 chapters of the book for discussing the main topics of the book on the following class. Students will have a week to read 80 pages.
Class 2
Objectives: At the end of the class students should be able to understand the vocabulary used by the writer Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls, in the beginning of the book, and they also should be able to identify some aspects of the language like tone, mood, imagery, theme, motivation, finding examples in the text and debating them with the other members of the group.
Key vocabulary: calories, food, death, stepmother, stepsister, family, hospital.
Grammar and vocabulary studied: family members, aspects of the language: tone, mood, imagery, theme, motivation.
Material: The book Wintergirls, slides about aspects of the language, dictionaries.
Procedure: The teacher should first check with the students what they remember from the previous class. They should remember they discussed about the video of Isabelle Caro and then remember what kind of vocabulary and language they used as well.
Check if the reading of the book was difficult or not and check their opinions on ways to make the reading easier and more interesting. The teacher should suggest some sites that offer good dictionaries for free like Thesaurus.
The teacher should then ask students to sit together with their groups to make the activities and then read the first chapter out loud for them. (If the teacher had already read the first chapter on the previous class he could read the second and third if he considers there will be enough time).
After the reading students should take some words they found confusing or the ones they did not know the meaning and check on the dictionaries available in class. The teacher may use make a game of word puzzle to make students find or connect words (Attached File 5). The teacher should scaffold students but not giving them the meaning himself because students should identify the meaning of the word not only by the explanation given on the dictionary, but also considering how it works on the paragraph.
Then, the students should debate the most important facts presented on the first 20 chapters listing them on a paper to be given to the teacher.
Then, the students should debate their opinion over what they have read so far answering the following questions:
§ What do you notice?
§ What do you question?
§ What do you feel?
§ What do you relate to?
The teacher then should introduce the aspects of the language the students are supposed to know by the end of the class using the slides presented on the attached files number 2.
As an exercise, each group is going to be responsible to find on the text an example of one of the aspects of the language presented by the teacher.
The teacher verifies the parts the students have chosen and the class, debates the examples if they were accurate or not, if not, what other part would be a better choice.
Extra-activity: Students may read their favorite parts to their groups out loud.
Homework: Students should read chapters 21 to 30 for the following class.
Class 3
Objectives: At the end of the class students should be able to have a better understanding of the vocabulary used in the book debating the most important points of the last chapters and analyzing the structures the author chose to write the book. For doing so they should be able to act some dialogues presented on the book with many ways and in different moods, as if the character was sad, terrified and angry.
Key vocabulary: calories, eat, restrict, funeral, ghost, metabolism.
Grammar and vocabulary studied: Review of Aspects of the Language studied on the previous class, journalistic style.
Material: Slides about Aspects of the Language, Book “Wintergirls”, dictionaries.
Procedure: Review with students the most important points discussed on the previous class. Each group will receive a slip of paper with a part of the book “Wintergirls” and they should identify what aspect of the language is presented on the paper. Then, the teacher will verify their answers. Still in the groups the students will try to remember the importance of such citations to understand the story so far. The students will receive a hand out with examples on how to debate different opinions inside the groups taken from Burke page 224 (Attached Files number 6).
The teacher will revise the Aspects of the Languages using the same slides from the previous class and then students are supposed to take another example of each one of them from the chapters 20 to 30. The teacher should verify with the students their answers making them explain their choices.
The groups will get together to share their production concerning to the Literature Circles, debating and sharing information about what they have read.
The groups will choose important dialogues presented on the book so they can present them to the class as if they were the characters. They should act but still using the books (students do not need to memorize the lines) and they will use different tones to the lines. They will read the lines angrily, sadly, terrified, or any other form they judge interesting.
Using the site eatinndisorders.weebly.com, the teacher should present the page about the author Laurie Halse Anderson. Students will watch the video on which she presents where she had the idea of writing the book Wintergirls. Students should change the groups, working with someone they haven`t worked before to debate in groups what they have understood from the video.
Present the language used by the writer, crossed words and empty chapters. Students should debate what the author means by using such strategy.
Extra-activity: The teacher can explore different parts of the site like the part For Students. In groups they could debate the other questions presented on the page. They may also using their smart phones start participating on the blog writing their opinion of the book so far or commenting on other students` comments.
Homework: Read chapters 31 – 49. Pages 132 to 226 for the following class.
Class 4
Objectives: At the end of the class students should be able to have a better understanding of the text debating the most important points of the last chapters with a different perspective. Students should also be able to analyze the book using a different perspective, producing a letter as if they were Carrie leaving a message for Lia, the protagonist.
Key vocabulary: death, self-mutilation, angst, pain, food, anorexia, bulimia.
Grammar and vocabulary studied: Structure of a simple letter (review).
Material: The book Wintergirls, the site (eatinndisorders.weebly.com), dictionaries, old magazines and old newspapers.
Procedure: The students will start the class in their groups debating what they think of the pictures presented in the site. They should connect the pictures to the story of the book. The students may use the attached file number 6 to help them debate the subject in the groups.
The students should get together with their groups and discuss each other`s tasks (Literature Circles). The teacher will then give students a bigger paper in which students must create together a picture that describes one of the characters of the book. The group must choose only one character to describe. They will have from 20 to 30 minutes to create the picture and choose a member of the group to explain to the rest of the class their choice and what the picture really describes. Students can either draw or take pictures from magazines or newspapers.
Still in their groups students are going to debate how the story looks like trough Lia`s point of view. Students must answer the questions in order to understand better her perspective. The students should use a Psychological Criticism to debate Lia`s personality and how she changes along the story. Use the slides about Psychological Criticism presented on the site http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16581029/Psychological-Criticism to make students understand what they are supposed to look for on the text. Students should find evidence of this kind of criticism with parts of the book, showing how Lia feels about herself.
After the debates students are supposed to write a letter. The letter should be a Farewell one. The letter should be at first written by Cassie, explaining Lia why and how she died and how Lia was responsible or not for her death. Students should also use evidences and even quotes from the book to write their letters. (They may not have time to finish the letter in class, so they may finish it at home but give to the teacher on the following class).
Extra-activity: If students have problems in writing the letter relating to structure and parts of a letter, the teacher may provide these students examples with slides. Homework: Read chapters 50 on to the following class.
Class 5
Objectives: At the end of the class, students will be able to show their point of view of the story presenting some videos or slides produced by them. The students should also participate on the blog writing their analysis of the book.
Key vocabulary: Health, Family, Bulimia, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, diet, health problem, drugs, calories, food, death, stepmother, stepsister, family, hospital, eat, restrict, funeral, ghost, metabolism, death, self-mutilation, angst, pain.
Material: smart phones or computers, book Wintergirls, dictionaries, site eatinndisorders.weebly.com, letters written by the students, posters created by the students on the previous classes.
Procedure: In this last part of the class, students should get into their groups for the final considerations of the book and final analysis. They should use attached file 6 to debate their opinion over the book and how it made them think about eating disorders. They should identify the Big Idea of the book and the most images presented. They should then prepare a presentation, using power point, prezi, or movie maker to explain their final conclusions about the book to the class. The students can use the questions presented at the end of the book to make the final analysis. They should also, using their smartphones or computers comment on the blog of the site their final analysis. Students should also respond to questions presented by the teacher on the site Polleverywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com/).
Extra-activity: Students may use their cell phones to record interviews among themselves as if they were one of the characters of the book telling the story of the book in their point of view. They may use their creativity to make videos and/or perform discussions online or in class.
End Activity (SKYPE) - Students are supposed to write questions for the writer Laurie Halse Anderson in order to talk to her on Skype. Each group of five students will choose the best question and talk to her.
Evaluation: Students will be evaluated according to their participation on the discussions in the groups, presence in all the classes and in the papers written. The teacher will also check their participation on the blog and the quality of the material presented by them considering use of vocabulary, grammar and content.
Bibliography
ANDERSON, Laurie Halse. Wintergirls. World Book Night U.S. 2012.
BURKE, Jim. The English Teacher's Companion: A Completely New Guide to Classroom,
Literature-Circles: Voice and choice in the student-centered classroom by Harvey Daniels. Stenhouse Publishers, York, ME.
Discussion-Based Aprroaches to Developing Understanding: Classroom Instruction and Student performance in Middle and High School English, Arthur N. Apllebee and Judith A. Langer, University at Albany; Martin Nystrand and Adam Gamoran, University of Wisconsin, Madison. American Educational Research Journal. Fall 2003, vol. 40, n 3, pp. 685-730.
Sites
http://eatinndisorders.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.slideshare.net/eduhawk/readers-response-journal
http://www.polleverywhere.com/
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=1060479&CFTOKEN=40563857
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16581029/Psychological-Criticism
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