Week of November 4th through November 8th

This weeke we focused on Historical Fiction, which is awesome because I'm such a history nerd. One of my favorite books of all time, _The Raging Quiet_, is a historical fiction book and it's fantastic. It's about this girl who gets forced into a marriage to the richest man in town, and they move to a deserted, run down cottage in a new village away from home. It's a rough marriage and Marnie (the main character)virtually hates him. After an accident leads to her husband's death and Marnie befriends the town madman, she is accused of being a witch. However, we come to find that the madman (Rave) is not crazy at all, but rather he's deaf and gets frustrated that he can't talk or understand what others are saying. Marnie and him create a special language that he can use to communicate with her, she renames him "Raven," and they end up falling in love. Meanwhile, the townspeople want Marnie to be tried for witchcraft, so they put her through various tests and then they find out that she's indeed not a witch and her and Raven are married and move away from the cottage. It's a wonderful story. Anyway, this week we focused on the "Dear America" series with historical fiction and how to utilize discussions with historical fiction and how historical fiction can hook readers. We also utilized book pass, which is a technique used to find the hook in books within the first few pages and getting a variety of different hooks in minutes by passing books around. I liked the technique because it kept my brain working and I got to read a variety of different books within the class period, but at the same time I was kind of on the negative end of things since I got stuck with the book no one wanted. I ended up liking the book, but I know younger elementary kids wouldn't have been as willing to leave with quiet dignity and grace. Anyway, one thing I brought up in discussion on Wednesday when we talked about the Dear America books and the book pass was that maybe next time when you made the different groups of books based on the historical time line, use a variety of books instead of just the Dear America series. That way, there's more of a variety of literature to use and not just the diary format. I know that sometimes I get annoyed with that format, so it'd be nice to be able to switch from that format to a regular novel to perhaps even a graphic novel, just to add in that diversity. Kids love diversity, and so do us adults (well, sometimes). I liked the book pass idea and I would definitely use that in my classroom, perhaps in the morning to get the brain moving!