A Good Teacher's Guide is Like a Road Map
I love teaching novels. Probably because I love reading novels. So there is nothing more rewarding than exposing my students to good literature and being a part of the magic that happens when a whole room full of kids exhales after a tense scene or laughs or groans when we end a chapter and I say that's it for the day. But preparing to teach a novel? It's a ton of work. I begged my principal a few months ago to let me teach this amazing book called MOON OVER MANIFEST. It won the Newbery a year or two ago and quite simply, it's brilliant. Because I have a great administrator, he dug up a few hundred bucks somehow and I got a class set. Then, the work began. First, I had to cull through that puppy and find all the words that kids in sixth grade may or may not know. Then, I had to write good, solid, context clues-type activities for those words, because that's what our standards call for. Then, I had to decide how to introduce the novel. And since it takes pla...