Whale Talk Begins

I decided today, while reading journals from my honors class, that I want to document our unit on my very favorite book Whale Talk by, Chris Crutcher. I didn't have this idea until after we had already started, so I'm creating two posts today. We'll start with the HOOK.
________________________________________________

To open a unit on this book, I needed something EPIC. The book deals with real-life issues, that students face each and every day. The characters are rich, real, and just so absolutely funny/heartbreaking. They are also vastly different from one another. The characters, who attend the fictional Cutter High, reflect students in actual high schools - including the tendency of teenagers to separate themselves into cliques. So, with the help of the OTHS literacy coach - Melanie - I developed an activity that forced my students to put the characters from WT into social groups.

They came into class on Tuesday afternoon, and were split into the Red team and the Green team. I created the groups purposely - making sure that best friends were not together; I had hoped to create some natural tension, but they all worked really well together.

After all of the kids were seated, I handed them this:

They also got a series of 14 cards that looked like this:
I spent almost a week creating those cards. I chose the characters to use, and filled out the interests/activities and about me sections with information from the novel. The other sections Mel helped me with - we fleshed out these characters based on what we knew from the novel. I spent an insane amount of time looking for quotations that would reflect the characters on a deeper level. The kids will "get" the quotes later - when we finish reading. Right now, they are just random quotations. Anyway ...

I gave them 30 minutes to use the information on the cards to create three believable groupings. I couldn't stop smiling the entire time because of HOW they approached the task. Both groups, though not talking to each other, created very similar groups. They generally put the characters in the same places, but are so far off in some cases that I actually laugh looking at the posters.

As the worked:



The Red Team's Groups:


And, the Green Team's Groups:


When the half hour was up, I asked the kids to do this:
I didn't give them a lot of time, because - as honors kids - they would have over analyzed. So, that was it. I told them that they had been working with the characters. I told them that they had some things "right" and some of their groups were WAY off. Then, we started reading.

I read almost the entire first chapter out loud, and they ate. it. up. It was amazing to watch them laugh, actually laugh, at a book. I watched them get into it in the first 30 pages. For homework, they read chapter 2, and I asked them to write a journal about what they think so far.

I'll let you know!