Tickets to See Charlotte's Web

Proposal: Take class of 5th/6th (bilingual) graders too the play Charlotte's Web to compliment a unit study on character analysis Introduction: I am a second year teacher in the New York City public school system. I teach a self-contained class of 5th/6th grade bilingual (Spanish) students in Harlem. This year, the class will immerse itself in a character analysis as a literacy unit of study. Unit of Study: The overarching focus of the reading unit (which is scheduled for 5 weeks)is what motivates the characters in books to speak and behave in the manners they do. In approaching the unit, we will focus on distinguishing main characters from minor characters, characters' dialogue, inner and outer conflicts, reactions, relationships, motivations, likes, dislikes, changes in personality traits over time etc. Specifically, the unit will be guided by the following questions: What do we notice about the setting? How is the setting important to the story? Who are the characters and how do they relate to each other? Which character(s) seems most important to the story? What kind of person does this character seem to be? What issues and challenges does this character face? What's inside this character that gets in the way, or even adds to these challenges? How is this character changing and why? How is this character having an effect on other people? How are other people or events having an effect on this character? Do I want to be like this character? Why? A writing unit focusing on setting forth an idea about a character and then supporting it with textual evidence will take place alongside the reading unit. Students will learn how to create a thesis statement and how to substantiate it. The final publication will be a five paragraph essay following the format of introduction paragraph that sets forth a thesis statement and three supporting examples based on textual evidence. The following three paragraphs will explore the examples in depth. The final paragraph will be the conclusion paragraph. The reading unit is meant to support this endeavor. In order to support the unit of study, I will read from Charlotte's Web for read-alouds. As this book has been translated to Spanish, I will alternate the interactive read-alouds between English and Spanish using a roller coaster model (one day Spanish, the next day English). Two days a week, students will be expected to read on their own. Their independent reading will be supported with classroom discussions. When students are expected to read portions of the book independently, the teacher will pick-up the read-aloud a page before the last page they were assigned to further support their comprehension skills. We will also focus on 2 passages from the book for shared reading. Each passage will be studied for an entire week with focus placed on personality traits, descriptive words, dialogue, behavior, and mood. Benefits: In general, the experience of seeing the words of a book brought to life will bring students' understanding the characters of the book to a higher level. It will also reward their efforts to engage in a critical study of the book's characters. Furthermore, it will solidify the level of understanding reached by high and middle performing students. For low performing students, the play will fill in gaps in understanding character traits, motivations, changes etc. As the play will be in English, it will also clarify some portions of the book for non-English proficient students. They will have the opportunity to connect words to visual images. Lastly, the experience will also serve to foster a sincere appreciation for the arts. Pre-Experience Lesson: Part 1. Mini-lesson on the protocol of a round-table discussions in an academic context. Students will publish their character essays in a round-table format. They will be grouped according to their thesis statements and engage in discussion over the conclusions they drew about the book's character(s). Each round-table will synthesize the various viewpoints discussed. The round-tables will each share-out the summarizations of their discussions. Part 2. Students will be able to challenge the thesis statements of other students who were not part of their round-table discussions drawing on textual evidence to support their difference in opinion. Post Experience Lesson: Mini-lesson on interweaving new information with old information. The post experience lesson will focus on whether and if so, how the play solidified or changed students' arguments about the book's characters. Students will write a reaction paper that details whether and how the focus of their original essays would be different, if they had been able to write it after seeing the play.