Lesson Plan: Contextualizing Otherness in The Giver

Title

Lesson Plan: Contextualizing Otherness in The Giver

Subject

Genre/Novel Study of Dystopian Novels

Creator

Kristen Sullivan, Graduate Student, Fitchburg State University

Rationale

We use a variation of The Reader’s Workshop model. Our reading of The Giver happens as the second of three parts/bends in a unit. Students begin by reading choice novels within the dystopian genre. We use a short mentor text, "Ponies," to identify characteristics of the genre and then students apply them to their own independent choice books. By the time we start The Giver, we stretch our thinking to make connections to the real world. This lesson would occur about two-thirds of the way through the book or shortly after we have finished reading it.  

Proposed Class Grade/Size

6th Grade

Objectives

  1. Students will be able to synthesize information across texts through discussion and in writing.
  2. Students will be able to apply new concepts (identifying treatments of otherness) to their reading of The Giver.
  3. Students will be able to craft a claim related to otherness and this dystopian genre supported with evidence from the text.

Bibliography

Enriquez, Grace. "Making Meaning of Cultural Depictions: Using Lois Lowry’s The Giver to Reconsider What Is ‘Multicultural’ about Literature." Children's Literature Review, edited byLawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 199, Gale, 2015. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.fitchburgstate.edu:2443/apps/doc/H1420119753/LitRC?u=mlin_c_fitchcol&sid=LitRC&xid=d8873592.  

Fredrickson, George and Albert M. Camarillo. “Religion and the Invention of Racism.” Racism: A Short History, Revised ed., Princeton University Press, 2002, pp.15–48. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc779fw.6. 

Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Kyoung-Min, Han, and Yonghwa Lee. "The Philosophical and Ethical Significance of Color in Lois Lowry's the Giver." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018, pp. 338-358. ProQuest, doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.fitchburgstate.edu:2048/10.1353/uni.2018.0031.

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Paul, Nicholas L. “Modern Intolerance and the Medieval Crusades.” Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, edited by Nicholas L. Paul et al., by David Perry and Geraldine Heng, 1st ed., Fordham University Press, 2019, pp. 34–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvnwbxk3.7.

Perdigao, Lisa K. "‘Something He Could Keep’: The Politics of Change in Postmodern Adolescent Literature." Children's Literature Review, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 199, Gale, 2015. Gale Literature Resource Center,  https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.fitchburgstate.edu:2443/apps/doc/H1420119755/LitRC?u=mlin_c_fitchcol&sid=LitRC&xid=d34c3266. Accessed 20 Mar. 2020.

Files

Citation

Kristen Sullivan, Graduate Student, Fitchburg State University, “Lesson Plan: Contextualizing Otherness in The Giver,” Teaching the Middle Ages in Higher Ed, accessed May 5, 2024, https://medievalhighered.omeka.net/items/show/52.