On My Own
(Extensive Novel)
Social Experience - Individual and Social Responsibility
Student Page
teacher version of this page OR back to the subtheme home page

Key Concept:

As every individual faces challenges, he must make difficult decisions while considering his responsibilities to himself and to others. As the students begin the unit Individual and Social Responsibilities, it is an appropriate time to begin the extensive novel, an assignment that will require them to work both independently and with a partner.

Objectives:

You will be able to
- read to make connections
- read to find meaning
- make and confirm predictions
- make and confirm inferences
- reflect and evaluate
- respond personally, critically, and creatively
- record responses in a reader's journal, log, or notebook
- demonstrate an increased ability to interpret symbols and symbolic patterns in literature
- relate literary experience to personal experience and extend personal response
- explore human experiences and values reflected in texts
- read to stimulate imagination
- assess a selection's merit as a literary work
- cite appropriate evidence to support responses
- recognize writing as a process of constructing meaning for self and others
- write to reflect, clarify, and explore ideas
- write to express understanding
- write to express self

Resources:

- Prompts/questions for the dialogue notebook
- Notebook Example
- Evaluation tool for the dialogue notebook

Teaching-Learning Strategies:

As you continue to develop your skills as readers, you should be able to read independently with the purpose of making connections, reflecting, and evaluating.

Task One: My Purpose

You will be reading an extensive novel and completing a dialogue notebook.

To begin, your teacher will select a novel for the class to read as a whole or a group of novels from which you may choose individually.

Below is a list of possible novels your teacher may suggest from the Individual and Social Responsibility sub-theme:

1. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, England)
2. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, France)
3. Nectar in a Sieve (Kamala Markandaya )
4. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, USA)
5. Man's Fate (C. Malraux, France)
6. Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham, England)

Spend some time, as a class, discussing the guiding questions for this unit.

Your discussion should help you to set a purpose for your independent reading.

Task Two: My Thoughts

In order to complete a dialogue notebook, you must read the assigned novel and then follow the steps below.

Notebook Format

1. Come to class with a notebook or several pieces of paper you can staple together as a notebook.
2. Look at each of the questions/prompts provided for the dialogue notebook
3. On the top of each of the pages in your notebook, write one of the prompts down (Note: Each question includes a list of things you may want to consider while answering the dialogue question. You do not need to copy these into the dialogue notebook).
4. Divide each page in half vertically.
5. On the left side, put the heading - My Response. On the right side, put the heading - My Partner's Response. On the back, put the heading - My Second Response. When you are finished, each page should look like the example provided.

As you read the extensive novel, you will stopping to answer the first four questions provided.

Your responses should give information about the characters in the novel, insights into their motivations, thoughts on why the characters act the way they do, explanations regarding whether you agree or disagree with the characters' actions.You SHOULD NOT be summarizing the book in your dialogue notebook!

For each entry you must:
1. Answer the questions/prompts provided in the handout
2. Allow a partner to respond to their ideas regarding the questions/prompts
3. Respond again after reading their partner's comments. (This final response will give you the opportunity to consider your partner's opinions and any new insights with which he/she may have provided you).

Your teacher will help you to set a time line regarding deadlines for each notebook entry. The questions are meant to be answered as you are working through the novel and not at the end of the novel.

Task Three: My Opinion

Once you have completed the novel, reflect on the literary value of the text. Continue your dialogue notebook using the last two questions/prompts included in the handout.

Tip - as you are reviewing the novel, try to consider what you learned from the characters, rather than whether it was as exciting as the last movie you saw!

Once you have completed the dialogue notebook, you will hand it in to your teacher to be evaluated using an evaluation tool similar to the rubric provided.