1. Literature Circles

2. What is a Literature Circle?
Choose and talk about a book of your choice (sadly limited by me)
Chance to work independently while reading and completing assignments
A chance to work with a group to make connections (synthesize!) between the novel and videos we watch, poems we read, quotes or articles we analyze, etc…
A chance to talk to your group members to learn more about what is happening in your novel
A chance to discuss your novel with a group of your peers
YOU MUST READ ONE NOVEL BUT YOU CAN READ MORE THAN ONE.

3. What am I expected to do? READ TALK WRITE ANALYZE WORK INDEPENDENTLY
COLLABORATE WITH YOUR PEERS

4. What will I be working on?
Reading skills
Finding key quotes
Understanding how the literature terms apply to your novel
Speaking Skills
How to have academic conversations
Writing Skills
Research Synthesis paper
Personalized Learning
Connection Based Project

5. Four Discussions (recorded an emailed to me or on a USB and given to me)
Total: 20 marks
Synthesis (Research Essay)
Total: 18 marks
Connection Based Learning Project
Total: 35 marks
What will I be marked on?

6. What is the link between these novels?
How does one find their way in the world that they live in?
What impact does one’s environment have on shaping their identity?
How does one’s emotional, psychological and social situations shape their identity?
How does our past shape our identity moving forward in life?
All these books examine how our identity came be impacted by our past or our environment. They also examine how we have to preserve in order to truly find out who we are as an individual.

7. The Choices (Identity/Human Condition)
The Kite Runner- The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
The_Kite_Runner

8. Red Rising
Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.
red-rising

9. The Illegal
Keita Ali is an elite runner living in Zantoroland, a poor, fictional island that is erupting in political violence. When his father, a journalist, is murdered, Keita escapes to the wealthy nation of Freedom State—an imagined country much like our own. A stateless refugee without documentation, Keita must hide from the authorities even as he races marathons to support himself and ransom his sister who has been kidnapped. This tension-filled novel by the best-selling author of Someone Knows My Name is an astute exploration of dislocation, starting all over again, and the desperate need for home and community.
17-the-illegal

10. Lullabies for Little Criminals
At thirteen, Baby vacillates between childhood comforts and adult temptation: still young enough to drag her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase yet old enough to know more than she should about urban cruelties. Motherless, she lives with her father, Jules, who takes better care of his heroin habit than he does of his daughter. Baby's gift is a genius for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness that fall into her lap. But her blossoming beauty has captured the attention of a charismatic and dangerous local pimp who runs an army of sad, slavishly devoted girls—a volatile situation even the normally oblivious Jules cannot ignore. And when an escape disguised as betrayal threatens to crush Baby's spirit, she will ultimately realize that the power of salvation rests in her hands alone.
s_for_Little_Criminals

11. Night
An autobiographical narrative in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, watching family and friends die, and how they led him to believe that God is dead. Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie Wiesel reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forget man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.