Independent Reading Assignment: Read a Movie

This assignment is pretty simple.  First, I have my students select a text.  They have to read a novel that has been turned into a movie for this first grading period.  I encourage students to pick something slightly challenging/above their reading level and tell them that they need to read something apx. 150 pages long.  Here is information about that: http://roselynrobison.blogspot.com/2014/09/independent-reading-text-selection.html

I give points for independent reading in my class in two ways.  The first way is that when a presentation ends early or we have an extra five minutes, students can earn points for having their text on them and reading silently.  These are easy points, but this works as an excellent sponge activity and ensures that my students are never sitting around and doing nothing.  Even though we do read in class, this rarely is enough time for students to complete the book and they are required to read at home and on their own.  They also watch the movie before the end of the grading period and on their own.

The students also receive points at the end of each grade-term for completing some kind of a project associated with the independent reading and turning in their annotated text.

For this assignment students are asked to annotate for only one aspect: character/character development.  In class, as we are reading, this will be a major focus of instruction, so this helps to drive these concepts home.

Students are also required to watch the movie and annotate it.  They are asked to look for the same cinematic elements that they learned about when watching the Life of Pi.  Check that out here: http://roselynrobison.blogspot.com/2014/09/life-of-pi-summer-reading.html.  This really helps to reinforce these concepts.

At the end of the quarter all of the tenth grade honors students are required to do an in-class write (this is the project) comparing the development of one character in the novel with that same character's development in the movie.  They are asked to analyze the literary devices used by the author with the cinematic devices used by the director.