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Fever 1793 Discussion Stategies

For the book Fever 1793, I would have my students write response logs and I would have them find Golden Lines. 

 Response Log
I would have these ongoing throughout the book, and my students would be encouraged to focus on several things: most importantly, how the book makes them feel. This book is full of high emotional content and some disturbing events. I would have my students write down times when they were feeling strongly emotional and why they think that is. I would want them to copy down lines from the text that were especially evocative and use those to articulate what they are feeling and why; I would have the students remark on their thoughts and impressions of the characters. The book, being written in first person, has a strong bias to the main character's view of the world and of the other characters. I would have the students make comparisons between how characters are described and how they actually think the characters appear - I would suggest that they use the voices of other characters to back up those thoughts. This would be a more guided section, where I chose which characters to focus on in a specific chapter; finally, I would have the students log how they would react in a specific event. We see the main character take on many hardships and react to unexpected events. In every chapter, I would ask my students to pick one event and write a response on how they would have reacted. If it seemed reasonable to the student, then they could write their own narrative-response where they put themselves in the main character's shoes.

 Golden Lines
At the end of the book, I would assign groups of students to look at specific chapters and find their "golden lines". They can do this whatever way makes sense - working together to find the lines, splitting the chapter and each being responsible for combing a different section, or finding the lines independently and comparing which ones they prefer. If I paired this with the Response Log, then there would be a "Potential Golden Line" section in the Log so that they could keep track as they read. I would have the students explain to their group members why they felt the line they chose was significant and I would task them with connecting it to something outside the book, such as another piece of media or their own lives. After they did this, the groups would share out with the whole class. 

 I think that both of these strategies would help the students connect to the book. The first one involves a lot of feeling and exploring, and I think that would help the students put themselves in the book and relate to their characters, which helps make connections. The second strategy invites the students to assign meaning to specific lines, and to hear the meaning that their classmates have derived, which is a social way to connect the students to what they have read.

Comments

  1. Anya BentApril 27, 2017 at 12:58 PM

    Great book to choose, and one that can cross disciplines very easily.

    ReplyDelete

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