Graveyard Book Assignment

The Graveyard Book includes a lot of creatures that students may think they have knowledge on, including: vampires, ghosts, ghouls, and witches. I want to challenge students to break through the stereotypes of these creatures and truly analyze their character traits. This assignment is designed to get students to think critically about why they are making judgments about a certain character, and how they can back up those claims using textual evidence.

I made a portion of this assignment as group work, because I wanted this assignment to be an introductory practice of supporting judgments with evidence from the text. I want to give students time to discuss their judgments with their classmates. Students will be on different levels of understanding of each character in this text. This group work allows students

Title: Witches Vampires, Ghosts, and Ghouls vs. the Humans: Which is more terrifying?

2. Grade Level/ Content Area: 6th grade Language Arts

3. GAP Statement: You will write a compare and contrast character critique for the class while citing evidence from the text.

4. Location: I would try to plan this lesson around October. For one thing, the theme goes great with Halloween. This location allows students to review the concepts of plot. This lesson originates from plot understanding, and builds a deeper meaning of plot development. This lesson will introduce students to the definition of a static character and a dynamic character. Students will learn how to describe a character based on the character’s actions, what the narrator says, and interactions with other characters. This assignment gives students practice making a judgment, and backing it by at least 6 pieces of evidence from the text. After each group presents a character analysis, students will begin the written portion of the assignment. Students will compare and contrast two characters, using the definitions of a static character and a dynamic character while citing at least 3