The Giver 3-5: Creating Analogies

My next lesson for The Giver is ready, and it is going to make some brains in my classroom explode. This lesson has been pieced together from two sources:  I have used Kelly Gallagher's iceberg metaphor strategy from Deeper Reading and the Synectic Analogous Thinking lesson from AVID's The Write Path -  English Language Arts: Exploring Texts with Strategic Reading. Both lessons require students to write comparisons to show attributes of a character through metaphorical thinking. I have used both lessons separately in previous years and finally figured out that they essentially are the same thing.

Students will need to create three analogies. The steps in the lesson are designed to explicitly teach what I am expecting the students to do, and I will have them create the first analogy step-by-step with me. 

Two analogies will show the visible characteristics of Jonas (the top of the iceberg). The third will represent Jonas's hidden side (below the surface). I am only having them do one of these for now because I have a feeling that this part will be very difficult for them, especially so early in the story. Advanced students will have to create two, but I like to keep that part a secret until I actually tell them. 

The lesson also reinforces the use of text evidence. The kids are usually pretty good at finding the information from the text that they want to use, but this year in particular, we are struggling with how to correctly punctuate and site the information from the book. This gives me yet another opportunity to reteach this skill. 

I love this lesson and am likely to extend it to my Milkweed assignments with Pre-AP. I will be sure to share samples on this one.