Independent Reading Celebration
Julia liked “New Beginnings,” the first book in the Everyday Angel Series by Victoria Schwab, but she didn’t like how Aria, the main character, is introduced. She chose to rewrite a portion of the first chapter.
Quinn loved “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J. K. Rowling but had a hard time keeping track of Harry and Hermione’s time travel. She created a color-coded time line to track both linear time as well as magical time.
Theo gave “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding five out of five stars. He created a map of the island on which the boys in the novel are stranded on and made a pig’s head —a symbol of evil and chaos in the book--out of paper-mache.
The Creative Results of Close Reading
A Wide Range of Books
These are just some of the imaginative book-based projects in Christine Watroba and Jeanne Kellachan's sixth grade, co-taught English Language Arts class. Along with the creative response, students also prepared a brief oral and written presentation that includes a summary and a recommendation.
The Independent Reading Celebration occurs twice per trimester. Students can choose whatever they want to read, with teacher approval. Selections ranged from “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870, to “Worlds Collide,” a fantasy novel in The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer, published in 2017.
Most, but not all, of the books featured were fiction. Grace chose "The Last Lecture," a memoir co-authored by Randy Pausch and Jeff Zaslow based on a lecture Pausch gave while diagnosed with terminal cancer. For her project, Grace highlighted some of the most meaningful quotes in the book. Her favorite? “No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better.”
