During winter break I read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It was truly one of the best books I have read in a while. I wanted some of my8th grade honors students to read the book, but since it wasn't part of the curriculum, I knew I had to ask them to read it on their own. I went back to school in January and talked about the book and told all of my classes not just honors what I wanted to do. I thought if I had twenty students volunteer to read the book, I would be doing well especially since the book is 550 pages long. Imagine my surprise when I ordered 45 books from Amazon.com. I had 15 others say that they would get the book on their own. We met once a week during lunch for four weeks to discuss the book. Students could come on either Thursday or Friday because there were too many for my classroom. Each day I would leave the discussion revitalized because the discussion was student driven, and I was so impressed with their insights. 44 students completed the book. Yesterday we celebrated the completion of the book with a pizza party and watched an interview with Markus Zusak. Now the kids are saying "What are we going to read next?" Any suggestions?
Margaret Hollies [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
