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**Summary and Context**

 * [[image:http://english.byu.edu/novelinks/Novel%20Pages/Adventures%20of%20Tom%20Sawyer.gif align="left"]] || In my role as Technology Specialist, I will be collaborating with the Language Arts teacher at our Middle School. There is a need to revise the perennial unit surrounding the reading of //The Adventures of Tom Sawyer//, to make it more accessible and engaging for students. The class consists of twenty-five seventh grade students. This book report type unit has been taught for several years and has been met with eye-rolling on the part of both students and teachers. At our Middle School, Language Arts/Literature courses are conducted in eighty minute blocks. The general plan is for students collaborate on producing a newspaper based on the text, while being provided scaffolding and support as needed. ||

**Objectives**
The learner will:
 * build vocabulary and reading comprehension skills
 * summarize and generalize literary material
 * analyze how literary characters solve problems
 * utilize technology to produce a composition or multimedia work

Pedagogical approach
I am a subscriber of the notion of learning by doing and as much as possible, the tasks set before students should be as authentic an activity as possible. For a book report project such as this, I think an Engaged Learning approach will work. (see [|http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/engaged.htm)] Students will be divided into groups and have various roles (drawn from the newspaper industry) with a goal of producing a high quality media content source. There are many variables that can be modulated to suit student interests, eg the style (inquirer vs Wall Street Journal), the format (online, audio, video or print based), etc. The class may work together as a team and, say, work on sections of one larger effort, or perhaps compete against each other for readership. Students will be presented with a cafeteria style menu of choices for ways of executing the product or brainstorm their own. Content options could range from news reports, to letters to the editor, to comic strips, or maybe even crossword puzzles featuring vocabulary words. In addition to a flexible alternatives to the traditional book report, students with diverse needs will be served by multiple means of content delivery: audio books, video, and online accessibility options (eg enlarged text).

Key Questions

 * How do we make sense of or derive meaning from reading material?
 * How do we effectively communicate our ideas to others?

Student knowledge and skills

 * Students will develop strategies for understanding unfamiliar material.
 * Students will communicate important ideas drawn from a literary source.