Lesson Plan: The Teacher's Funeral (excerpt) by Richard Peck

If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has been nothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacher has passed on, they'll shut the school down entirely and leave him free to roam.
No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead of him, led by a teacher he never could have predicted-perhaps the only teacher equipped to control the likes of him: his sister Tansy. Despite stolen supplies, a privy fire, and more than any classroom's share of snakes, Tansy will manage to keep that school alive and maybe, just maybe, set her brother on a new, wiser course.
~from Amazon.com description of the book The Teacher’s Funeral by Richard Peck
You can get the first two chapters free as a sample on the Amazon.com website.
As a reading and writing connection for the beginning of the school year, try introducing your workshop with a cute read from this novel by Peck?
Here’s how the lesson works:
Students read the first two chapters of The Teacher’s Funeral by Richard Peck. After reading, students respond to the following close read questions:

  1. What was your initial thought when you read that first line?
  2. Find examples of dialect in the text.
  3. Explain the point of view of this text. Find two examples of the point of view. Why does this point of view work for this piece of text? How would the text be different if it was told from another point of view?
  4. How does the author use humor in a piece about a serious topic? Find examples and explain why they seem effective or not.
  5. What is the allusion found in this piece? Explain the allusion and what it means.
  6. Explain the metaphor in this phrase: Today me and Lloyd were a pair of whirlwinds. Explain how this metaphor is extended in chapter 2.
  7. The narrator says that “The twentieth century had found us at last, even here.” Explain this line and its implications.
  8. After reading the first two chapters and the book description above, what do you think will happen in the novel? Do you think that you might enjoy reading this novel? Why or why not?






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Scout's Honor" by Avi

Image
I've created a learning resource to go along with the short story that you can find in my shop. My students have been telling me that it's quite difficult. We've done two pages per day as part of our reading workshop minilessons. They're writing the notes and responses in their journals. The grammar connection on infinitives really threw them for a loop~it was the first time that they've encountered this verbal. Melissa
Read more

Back to School Bumper Sticker Activity and Printable

Image
Here in Middle Tennessee, we go back to school in two weeks, so it's the perfect time to begin thinking about icebreaker activities.  My Back to school Bumper Sticker Printable and Activity includes 20 different bumper stickers, 10 color and 10 black and white. There are 2 bumper stickers per page. Use this as an icebreaker in the following way: Students brainstorm some bumper stickers that they've seen and what those bumper stickers say about the person driving the car. Then, the students will write down several bumper sticker sayings that represent them and their ideas or beliefs. Show students some examples of completed bumper stickers. Afterwards, give each student a copy of the bumper sticker template. Each student designs and creates a bumper sticker that represents him or her. After students have created their bumper stickers, they walk around the room reading each other's bumper stickers. This activity is a fun and creati...
Read more

The Forms of Personal Pronouns

Image
The form of a personal pronoun shows how it can be used in a sentence. Pronouns used as subjects and predicate nominatives are in the subject form. Examples:  He and I went to the post office. The winner of the marathon is she. Pronouns used as direct objects and indirect objects of verbs and objects of the preposition are in the object form. Examples: Mr. Garcia helped him and me with yesterday's homework. The clerk gave us the package. when is Theo going to give the flowers to her? Possessive forms (my, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, their, theirs, our, ours) are used to show ownership or possession. Examples: My sister had to turn the box on its end to get it through the door. A mother bear is very protective of her cubs. Personal Pronouns: Singular Subject: I, you, he, she, it Plural Subject: we, you, they Singular object: me, you, him, her, it Plural object: us, you, them Singular possessive: my, mine, you...
Read more