The Giver
When I first received this assignment, I thought I would ask one of my students I was working with in my student teaching class. The more I thought about it, I believed it would be more effective if I worked with more than one student. I thought this assignment would lend itself well to a small book group environment. I thought that using three students would generate discussions and interactions between the students, and that way the students could respond to each other, which would be so much more valuable than just a conversation between the young reader and me. This way, I would be able to provide structure to the discussion, but the students would be more responsible for the content. They could work off one another's ideas and thoughts about this wonderful text. Each student could provide his or her personal insight and understandings. I know that my reading of the text was deepened during our own class discussion and I was confident the same thing would occur in o! Since I had only been teaching for a few weeks and did not know my students very well, I explained my intentions and expectations to my co-operating teacher who helped me select my three readers. She was just as exc
It seems to me that so much time has passed since selecting these students, and I have gotten to know them so well since then, especially because of this group. Each student is a bright student, who frequently reads outside of the classroom. "John" arrived in this country four years ago from Russia and provided such a unique view on the text drawn from his rich experiences growing up in a foreign country. "Katie" is an avid reader and continually made many connections to other texts she had read before. "Anna" has a wonderful sense of humor and contributed a wonderful comic relief to the discussions. We decided to meet during lunch times, which provided a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Each worked so well together and our discussions were both lively and comfortable with little silences, in fact we often found ourselves still talking while the other students returned from lunch. As mentioned, we met during the lunch period, which gave us a good forty minutes for each meeting. Over the semester we met about five times, which gave us time to really examine a lot of the text. This book could take many more meetings than that for it is such a rich novel, but I feel that we accomplished so much in five meetings. Katie's initial response was similar, she too had difficulty understanding what was happening as she was first reading, and she mentioned that she was confused about why Jonas was so particular with his language, she remembered that that seemed so strange to her in the beginning. At this point, Anna jumped back in to agree (exactly the give and take I was hoping for, and here it was five minutes into our first meeting!) that "this is a book that you can not predict what is going to happen, ever!" Anna goes on to explain this theory and when she was finished, John, who was quiet up until this point states that he too was confused by the beginning. He explains that the point in which he finally began to slowly understand what was going on was in the auditorium, during the ceremony, and this was the point in which he started to get into the book because he no longer felt confused and frustrated by what was going on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This second session was even better than the first because it contained so much focus on the importance of personal choice. The students concluded that the community Jonas lives in is devoid of alternatives and options, and they did not think that would be a good way to go through life. While they realized that the community did not know any better, they believed this was no way to live. The students supported this understanding by explaining what happened to Jonas when he received the memories that he was never even aware existed. The members of the community did not even realize that life once contained color, love and emotions, and once Jonas learns what these are, he feels that everybody should experience them and he even tries to give the memories to others. I began the next session by bringing up the idea of ceremonies, and asking the students of there are any examples of such makers of time in our society. They seemed confused at first and I decided to provide an example to help the process along. I suggested that to me turning sixteen was a big deal for me because I could then drive. Each one of them looked at me like I had grown another head, and I slowly realized that they were urban city children who do not long for a car for their sixteenth birthday. This was an interesting moment for me, and I had to explain my example and then provided a more practical example such as being allowed to go to an R rated movie. This was more widely received and Katie told us that she is not allowed to wear makeup until she is thirteen and is anxiously awaiting the time to come when she can. We returned to what we began our meeting with, the ceremony of career assignments. I asked each student that if we had th
Some common words found in the essay are:
Elian Gonzalas, Giver Book, anna jumped, read book, you're talking, admitted confused, led discussion, reading text, texts read, book environment, john suggested, minutes meeting,
Approximate Word count = 2798
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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