It Takes a Graveyard to Raise a Child - Awesome Novel Study
My students need a class set of this amazing novel, The Graveyard Book, to work on understanding literary devices such as symbolism, metaphors and conflict.
"It takes a village to raise a child" may have aptly described our global community, but in Neil Gaiman's novel, it seems it takes only a graveyard to educate and nurture a child! The Graveyard Book has been called an allegory of childhood. It's also a great read and teaching tool for literacy.
This year I teach two sixth grades class in both language arts and social studies.
My students come from many cultures and many are from immigrant families. Education is very important but our community is a mostly low income. The children are eager and their parents value the classroom experiences I provide. This is also the middle school I attended as a teenager, so I feel a deep connection to my students and their future.
My Project
High interest books such as Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book can inspire and change the life of a child. By engaging students in meaningful literacy activities using this novel, I hope to capture their imagination and provoke a lifelong love of reading. As students study the characters, how they react and change over time and how plot events affect them, they learn more about themselves and the world around them. We will create "symbolism passports" to keep track of the clever literary messages in the book. We will write a script based on sections of the book to further our understanding. We plan to compare dramatic, audio and written versions of the story to deepen our comprehension of the plot conflicts so carefully crafted by the author. This novel study will bring new ideas and a fresh text to a classroom of eager learners.
Please support this great literacy project!
Novel studies allow students to build literacy skills while immersed in an imaginary, magical world of words. Each time 35 new books arrive, the students smile in anticipation of the learning about to begin. The Graveyard Book is beautifully written and will captivate my classes.
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