I did it with 7th graders at another school and was surprised when I came to my present school and found it in the 6th grade curriculum. I think the vocab load is hard. I promptly moved it to 7th after a year break (so the 6th wouldn't have read it). We will start it soon and I think what I will do this year is prepare a glossary to use side by side with the novel. I'm thinking landscape orientation, 2 columns, to create a small booklet which will sort of fit inside the paperback. This weekend I will go through the whole novel and list all the words which might confound them, especially the lower readers, even if it is 10 on one page, and give a synonym--the shorter the better. This will take some time....
Since it is always the $1 book for Scholastic book clubs this time of year, I have finally accumulated over 100 copies, so each 7th grader can take it home. I send home a letter suggesting families have a read aloud of the stave we are working on.
There are so many movie versions of ACC out there. I show a different one for each stave (just that portion of the DVD) BEFORE we read. So Stave 1 is Muppets, then Patrick Stewart, George C. Scott, and Alastair Sims. We compare and contrast.
We are also meeting at the theater for a 10 a.m. matinee once the Jim Carrey version opens!
I read aloud quite a bit and might try a CD someone gave me this year. I mainly use bits and pieces of a store-bought unit for Stave questions and activities. At my other school we had a Christmas Carol Feast one year and the kids could only bring food mentioned in the novel.
P.S. The very first time I read it (middle school), I didn't equate Carol and Stave
so I made sure the first time I taught it that I explained that immediately.
11-03-2009, 04:37 AM
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