The Giver Unit: After the first 8 chapters…Epilogue
Level: 7th Grade English Language Arts
Following the completion of the acrostics poster on day six, the novel will
be finished with several small units. These units will focus on theme,
sentence structure, plot, and one more lesson that touches on character
analysis. Students will become more familiar with the parts of a story, be
able to analyze the plot, and will also look back at character analysis from
the early part of the novel and reevaluate their views once they’ve finished
the book. We will focus primarily on Jonas, and the themes of memory. We
will also focus on the relationship between pain and pleasure in the novel.
This story is well written and Lowry did a nice job of writing sentences that
are properly laid out. These sentences can be broken down and used as
examples of proper sentence structure. Instead of starting students off
writing sentences from scratch and expecting them to come up with
properly written sentences, we will use Lowry’s work as our starting point
and work backward. Students often find motivation when they see that a
final, presentable product is possible and then they are shown the step by
step process.
Students’ final project over this novel will not be in the form of a test or a
paper. They will be asked to create a new book jacket for the novel. They
will create a new cover for The Giver and they will also be expected to write
a new synopsis for the back of the book. This will show what each student
saw as the focal points of the novel and will help the instructor to asses
students’ ability to analyze a piece of narrative work.