The lesson that will change all their lives forever... Or... At least it's finally done. Let's see how it goes.

I have sixty minutes to spend with them. They got to choose between any one of four books - Dandicat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, Marcus Zusak's The Book Theif, Daj Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets. My job was to create a lesson that got all the kids involved, that introduced and reinforced the concept of the Areas of Interaction in the Middle Years Program, and "covered" the summer reading.

I've been racking my brain for the last week or so about how to do this. Finally, I have come up with something. I have to do this lesson nine times next week, so hopefully it'll be perfect by time 4 or so.

8 minutes: Introduction to Areas of Interaction and Areas of Interaction in the English Classroom

5 minutes: Introduction to the genre of Coming of Age / Students take notes

2 minutes: put students into groups based on what book they chose

30 minutes: time to complete group activities. I have created one for each Area of Interaction that can be applied to all of the books.

10 minutes: present 60-second book "commercials," which was one of the tasks in the group activity

We'll see how it goes. I'm excited, at least.