Room 408: A World of Literature

A Study in Memoirs

By Mr. McAuliffe and Mrs. Young

            Throughout the month of October Mr. McAuliffe’s and Mrs. Young’s students were studying memoirs. As a class we opened our unit by reading and analyzing the elements of a memoir. Students worked in cooperative groups reading, analyzing, and sharing their analysis of various memoirs with the entire class. We studied the styles of numerous memoirists like Jerry Spinelli, Libby Moore Grey, and Sandra Cisneros. We also studied the writing styles of famous singer/ song writers like Billy Joel and Bob Denver. Finally, we constructed a checklist indicating all of the elements of a memoir.

            The students were asked to bring in a recent picture of a person or moment in time that had significant meaning to them. Based upon their photo, the students composed their own memoir using as many elements of a memoir as possible. We shared our memoirs in class, and they were displayed on our bulletin board.

In Through the Wardrobe

By Mr. McAuliffe and Mrs. Young

            In November and December our class traveled to a world of fantasy. We read the acclaimed novel from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As an opening activity our teachers allowed us to view a few scenes of the classic fantasy The Wizard of Oz. and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  We also read aloud and discussed many fantasy picture books for example Alice in Wonderland,  The Wreck of the Zephyr and Zathura just to name a few. After viewing the movies and reading the stories we recognized and recorded the elements that make up the fantasy genre. 

We worked in small cooperative groups and discussed the characters of the story, made predictions and connected the text to other books we have read. We kept an ongoing list of curious and interesting questions and vocabulary words. After each discussion we took time to write in our “LWW” Journals and shared our thoughts and ideas with our classmates.

As we reached the climax of the tale our teachers allowed us to design our own characters and we re-created the important battle scene. We took one class period to compare and contrast Edmund and Darth Vader from The Return of the Jedi. To tie all of our discussions together we were able to choose one of six final projects to complete. They were design a brochure of Narnia, draw a map of Narnia, re-write the conclusion of the story (as if the Queen won), create a photo album of the characters, write one-scene as a play or design a box illustrating different parts of the story on each side. After all of the hard work was done we had an “LWW” party where we watched a movie version of the book.

This Just in…we will be reading Summer Ball by Mike Lupica starting January. Look forward to seeing our write up in the next issue of Cottage Lane Express.