All students start reading the novel soon after the warm up. However, due to the heterogeneity of my population, I have to introduce the following modification:
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· The AP students read the novel as homework and have a window of three weeks. However, every day in class we spend twenty minutes to review one or two chapters. They are given five minutes to review the chapter, then they have to write one page reflections on what stands out most or a critic of the narrator. Soon after, they share their responses followed by discussion.
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· The College students read the entire novel too, but they are grouped according to their reading levels. The struggling readers read in class with me or the Special Education teacher who co-teaches with me, but every single part has to be preceded by a specific pre-reading activity. I generally use the Probable Passage and if their interest is really low I start class with the Tea Party Strategy (details for both strategies are in the Lesson Plan Section).
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· The College students who can read but need to work on their motivation start every class with a Quick Write that can be a "wonder why" question each student has followed by one paragraph response or even more. I sometimes select a quotation from the chapter(s) we have to read, and I ask them to use their prior-knowledge and write their reflections, and/or prediction. When the pre-reading activities are completed, we share, discuss, and start reading the assigned chapter(s). After reading the students have five to ten minutes to skim through the text and choose a quotation they analyze and explain.
While we are reading the novel, all the students are grouped based on their capabilities, motivation, interest, or special needs and are assigned different tasks. They have to study the narrator in the course of his journey and the complexities of his attitudes, but they also have to focus on other minor characters like the protagonist's grandfather, Jim Trueblood, Dr. Bledsoe, Mr. Norton, Reverend Homer A. Barbee, the Veteran, Mary, Brother Jack, Ras the Exhorter, and other secondary characters my students have to select on their own. We also identify and discuss the major themes and motifs, and the inner conflict of the protagonist, setting, syntax, structure, diction, tone, and figurative language. I also want to have some close reads of specific excerpts for the AP students and also for the College students. Each group has an expert and they have to decide what and how they have to proceed. They also have to complete this task as homework or in class based on the characteristics of the group. During our class discussion, the expert of each group presents the study and opens the discussion. All the details for the assigned tasks are specified in the Lesson Plans Section.