"The School Play" and "All Summer in a Day"

This past week saw the end of the second week of school~the first two weeks of me teaching sixth grade. Cross your fingers, so far I'm enjoying sixth graders. They are more innocent and sweeter than seventh graders, but not "too sweet." I've never been the kind of teacher that likes her students "too sweet." I like being able to joke around some with my students.

On Tuesday, my students will be tested over "The School Play" by Gary Soto~I know, the second week of school and already we've finished a story. Then we begin "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury. About fifteen years ago, this story was included in a seventh-grade anthology. My, how times have changed.

Upon first glance, I thought it might be a bit too difficult for sixth-graders, but the powers-that-be in the textbook world gave it a readability level of 5.2. Go figure.

In these two stories, the students are learning the basic elements of a story and the five stages of plot. Most of them know this already, so I don't plan on beating this horse too much. They seem to be fairly fluent readers, also.

The CCSS says that students should be able to read complex text independently. I'm practicing that this year by having students read their selections silently. Perhaps my expectations have not been high enough for the students.

Before I teach a text, I like to see what's out there. I found some good resources on teachers pay teachers for teaching "All Summer in a Day."

As an introduction, students can write an essay to the prompt: What if your whole world changed? In this day and age of Armageddon movies, imagining this scenario should not be a stretch.

The CCSS focus will be on setting, characters, and conflict.

The reading skill will be using inference skills to help with comprehension.

Here is another lesson plan that you might find interesting.

Check out this video that goes along with the story. There are several parts broken into nine to ten minute clips.

I've been working on a vocabulary lesson to go along with the story; hopefully, I'll get it done before Wednesday as that's when I plan on beginning the story.


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