Geneva Reads: Community Read
Activity Guides
Joy Gitter, Chiara Favaloro, and Danielle Mueller
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva Reads: Community Read 2014
”I used many of the questions in the reader's guide that my students
completed as they read…Their work saved me a lot of time searching for and
creating my own materials.”
– Mrs. Castor, teacher at St. Stephens Elementary school
Into the Wild
Hatchet
“I loved Into the Wild when I first read it the summer before my
senior year of high school, so I wanted to further explore and analyze it by
creating this reading and activity guide for high schoolers. When creating
the reading and activity guide to accompany Into the Wild, I tried to design
activities that were at an appropriate level for high schoolers. I targeted
important skills such as close reading, vocabulary expansion, analytic and
opinion essay structure, creative thinking, and connections across
disciplines”
– Joy Gitter, WS ‘16
“I kept certain goals in mind while creating the guide in order to make it fun to
work with for both teacher and students. I wanted to make sure that I was not only
hitting on all of the key plot points and turning points in terms of character
development, but I hoped that my guide would serve to enhance the student's
experience with the book. I also wanted to provide the students with numerous
learning opportunities to make sure that they began to push themselves to dig deeper
into the text and get more from the novel than just plot points. In order to do this I
made sure that students were pushed to read closely, and gain new perspectives on
life while reading the novel”
–Danielle Mueller, WS ‘16
Stone Fox
The Raft
Geneva Reads is a non-profit that strives to
improve literacy by having the whole community read
one book, with different books centered around a
common theme for younger kids.
For this year’s Community Read, the themes were
self-reliance and nature. These themes were explored
through the books Into the Wild for the community and
high schoolers, Hatchet for middle schoolers, Stone Fox
for grades 3-5, and The Raft for grades K-2.
“I wanted to create a guide for Elementary School students because
the students I had worked with at America Reads were in third and fifth
grade. Therefore, I felt my prior experience with younger students would be
beneficial when creating this guide. While creating these guides, I really
enjoyed trying to think of aspects of the curriculum that could be
academically challenging while also fun for the students to partake in”
– Chiara Favaloro, WS ‘16
Our Process:
• As a part of Jack Harris’ “Sociology of Community”
class last semester, we worked with Geneva Reads to
fulfill the service learning aspect of the course.
• We were each inclined to take on this project because
we have an interest in improving children’s literacy,
and have previously worked as tutors for America
Reads.
• We created student, teacher, and family guides for
the books included in the Geneva Reads 2014
Community Read program.
• Using the books, one another, and our community
partners and project advisors as inspiration, we each
created a guide to accompany one of the four books.
“This guide was slightly challenging because I had to make activities that would
be accessible to very young readers. Therefore, I included a lot of fun and educational
activities, such as going to the HWS Boathouse or creating a raft out of art supplies. I
felt that this would be more beneficial than posing challenging analytic discussion
questions”
– Chiara Favaloro, WS ‘16