On this past Thursday, 75 of the English 9 students took a trip down to Staunton, VA, to see the American Shakespeare Center's rendition of Romeo and Juliet. We finished the play in class last week, wrapping up with Act V, scene iii, with almost all of the students together, out of their seats, in the front of the room, participating in that giant scene in some way. I'd been hesitant to teach Romeo and Juliet so early in the year for many reasons, including the difficulty of the text and the potential shyness of new freshmen, who might be reluctant to stand in front of the class and read/act out the play, but because the Blackfriar was putting on Romeo and Juliet this fall as part of their twenty-fifth anniversary series, I took the plunge. It's been awesome and I've had no regrets.

During our unit, we've focused on inferences, characterization, summary, and paraphrasing difficult language. Paraphrasing is a skill that I discovered students needed when I was teaching the poetry components of AP Literature. I think for many of us who are strong readers, paraphrasing seems unnecessary. However, if you cannot break it down and put it into your own words in a way that makes sense to you, you cannot truly understand the text. Now, in the case of the entirety of Romeo and Juliet, we certainly did not need to paraphrase constantly, so the students worked on reading the language (they did many of the smaller scenes aloud in their groups) and talking through the scene until they could summarize the main events. We only paraphrased occasionally. I was still concerned that they didn't get it, but when I put Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 on their skills assessment, they did an awesome job with it. That skill will help them immensely when they get ready to write their poetry research projects. We also balanced our reading with watching scenes from the Franco Zeffirelli version of the play (1968) and the Baz Luhrmann version in 1996. I wrote more about those assignments here. We did film comparisons of several scenes, and the students wrote film comparison essays for the fight scene (Act III, scene 1) that turned out really well. In my evaluation of the essays, I focused on thesis statements, supporting details with commentary explaining what those details show, and MLA format and citations. Those specific skills will prove useful when we get ready to do research projects and other writing assignments. The students made brilliant observations about what they saw, and they had strong opinions about which version was more effective and more powerful. They rarely liked both interpretations--many found the Luhrmann's to be a betrayal of the original play and valued Zeffierelli's attention to the setting and costuming of Shakespeare's time period, whereas others thought that Luhrmann's interpretation was more dramatic and better suited to reaching today's audience.

As far as my personal opinion goes, I do remember seeing the Luhrmann version  when it came out and feeling betrayed--I guess I was a purist. However, I now love both versions, and I love examining them side by side because they show the complexity of the text. Although I love both, I must confess that after all of this time of examining both of them, I find the Luhrmann twist on the final scene to be incredibly moving. I've seen that scene many times at this point, and I still get chills every time Juliet's hand grazes Romeo's face and he grabs her arm. Wow. I included that clip below for your viewing pleasure. (My teenage self was appalled by this alteration that sullied the original events in the text. Man, was I missing out.) Anyway, this continual discussion in class about interpretations led the way toward the students being great audience members and critical thinkers when we took our field trip to see it at the Blackfriar.

This discussion about whether to update/modernize the traditional aspects of older texts, particularly Shakespeare's plays, continues to be a hot discussion. The new rendition of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway resulted in this interesting NY Times article debating the merits of modernization. As far as the play we watched in Staunton, the Shakespeare troupe at the Blackfriar did a phenomenal job of blending the traditional with the contemporary. The modern elements seemed natural, not distracting, and much of the traditional elements remained intact. The street fights included switch blades and brass knuckles in addition to swords, and Tybalt fought with a clawed glove (which suited the "King o' Cats," as Mercutio calls him). On the way to the masquerade party at the Capulet mansion, the boys wore Avengers masks and acted like the superheroes. Juliet in her Converses with a formal dress and Romeo in his flannel shirt with a vest showed their youthfulness and their attempts to play adults while still being children.

The cast also did an awesome job of showing the complexity of the characters. The nurse was a cross-dressing male actor, who ranged from being a doting, mother-like figure to an intimidating bouncer. The actor playing Mercutio sucked in the audience during his "Queen Mab" monologue in Act I, encouraging us to laugh along with him and then be struck by his seriousness. Romeo was an impulsive, romantic boy who showed moments of complete devastation and weakness as he lay on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably at the prospect of exile. Lord Capulet showed his only daughter genuine affection and tenderness, and the fight between him and her at the end of Act III felt so much like a real fight had between parents and children who misunderstand each other.

The actors playing Romeo and Juliet showed the giddiness and silliness of first encounters, but they coupled that humor with the tenderness of new love. They also showed the transformation from innocence and playfulness to intimacy and seriousness as they progressed from the balcony scene in Act II to the first (and only) night they spend together in Act IV. They made their initial infatuation believable, and they swept the audience up in the headiness of their sudden, passionate love. We mourned with them and for them. We went from side-aching laughter when the nurse wouldn't tell Juliet the news from Romeo to teary eyes as the nurse mourned the loss of her beloved Juliet. When Romeo killed Paris, he used a crowbar that left Paris hung against the door to the vault--an act that showed the rashness and frantic rage filling Romeo at that moment.

That is the magic of a phenomenal theatre cast--they were able to move us from absolute hilarity to profound sadness and loss. The students were awed and amazed. Despite the length of the play, the students remained focused and seated, sucked into the magic of the events as they unfolded. Several of them talked about taking their families to see it. Lots of them talked about going back to see other plays. The students are also dying to see the new version of Romeo and Juliet that just came out in film, but sadly, it isn't showing in our area. We may have to wait until it comes out on video to watch it.

I can't wait to see how watching the play has enhanced their understanding of the text, and I look forward to hearing their insights in the Socratic discussion we have this week as our final activity for the unit.

From the first moment that I heard about the novel Warm Bodies, I was intrigued. To me, the premise is fascinating. Isaac Marion takes two major writing tropes (zombie apocalypse AND star-crossed lovers) and marries them, producing a riveting new kind of fiction. I love novels that are both gritty and tender--ones that delve into complex characters and explore all sides of them (and we all know that I love works focusing on apocalyptic scenarios). While I've read/watched lots of zombie tales, I had never read one prior to this novel that explored the psyche of the zombie, or that presented the zombie as emotional and complex.  I love the way that Marion explores issues of identity, memory, alienation, loneliness, and grief. The best part? "R," the main character, has a wry sense of humor that is deadly. The first line of the novel demonstrates his wit: "I am dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it."

R often addresses the audience directly when he talks, which creates an interesting effect. Right away, R reflects on names as he talks to the reader:  "I'm sorry I can't properly introduce myself, but I don't have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries..." R goes on to reflect on the significance of names as part of identity and culture: "But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are."

R's stunning eloquence as a narrator is juxtaposed with his utter inability to articulate his thoughts verbally. He struggles to say simple words and phrases. After trying to communicate with Julie, who is human, R states his frustration: "Julie looks at me like she's waiting for more, and I wonder if I've expressed anything at all with my halting, mumbled soliloquy. Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.” What I love about Marion's prose is the captivating beauty with which he expresses the conundrum of communication. While R's struggles have to do with his undead state, he also articulates what so many people (perhaps teenagers most especially) experience when they try to share their thoughts with others. I want to change my punctuation. Ah, if that isn't beautiful, self-reflexive language, I don't know what is.

Despite my love of the novel, I was quite skeptical that my students would enjoy it. The text is much more difficult than many YA novels (in fact, it would probably not be classified as YA, though many people pushed it since the movie is definitely geared toward teens). The plot (despite the whole zombie thing) moves rather slowly. Additionally, the end, while functional, raises lots of questions. However, as with all novels I read and want to share, I put it to the test by placing it in the classroom library, and I found it to be a wild success. There was a waiting list for it, and I could never keep it on the shelf. Students who aren't crazy about reading seemed to handle it relatively well, and they enjoyed it.

If you're considering teaching a contemporary, post-apocalyptic novel, this one might be a good choice for a variety of reasons. First, the syntax and style of the novel beg closer study. Additionally, Marion provokes thought about complex issues of identity, alienation, and the determination to live despite horrifying circumstances. I would consider teaching Warm Bodies in advanced upper level classes (such as AP Lang or AP Lit) because of the syntactical structure as well as the complex questions that it raises about what makes life valuable. It would also be a great text to study along side of the film because the film version made some drastic changes (including sparing the life of a major character). You could explore the way that audience impacts storytelling and consider why Hollywood producers might soften the grittier parts of a novel for a teen movie audience. Additionally, Marion creates parallels between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and his own novel (which I discussed here), and that paired reading would be fun to explore as well.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Thank you so much for all of the emails and comments regarding this post and the materials I created. As of 9/4/14, the materials are now available on TeachersPayTeachers at my (newly created) store, Teaching the Apocalypse. Please check it out and download the materials from there (you'll have to create an account to download the materials). If they are useful to you, please RATE THEM on this page, and leave comments. You can FOLLOW ME on TpT, where I will soon post more materials and activities.

As you are likely aware, Divergent by Veronica Roth is a young adult dystopian novel that was first released in April of 2011. The second in the series, Insurgent, was released in May of 2012. According to my students, the next book, Allegiant, will be released in October of this year. The first novel, which is what I will focus on in this post, revolves around the choices that a teenage girl must make as she moves toward adulthood. It is set in a dystopian futuristic Chicago where the society is divided into factions based on which attribute they most value (bravery, truth, peace, knowledge, or selflessness). At the beginning of the book, the main character must choose her faction, and once she makes that choice, she must learn to live with the impact of that decision. Meanwhile, the world around her is rapidly changing and deteriorating in ways she only begins to discover. For more information about the book series, you can see Veronica Roth's page. Here's the trailer for the movie to be released in March 2014.

Above all else, I judge teen lit by how much excitement it generates in my students. We read Divergent in August, and I still had students talking about the movie and showing me images of the new book cover as late as May. I had three copies of Insurgent for the classroom, and they were constantly in demand and read (voluntarily) by almost half of my students. This book series resonates with the students and generates a tremendous amount of interest and excitement in reading. It is exciting and dares students to consider their own bravery, but it is also the story of a teenage girl discovering love and romance, which the students enjoy as much as they do the intensity of the action.

Last year, I began the year for English 9 with Divergent. The unit revolved around active engagement and how to make choices in the classroom and in the community. One of the things I loved about beginning the year that way was that students used Divergent during our SSR (sustained silent reading) time. That made it easier for them to adjust to SSR, and it was also nice because it allowed students who flew through the reading to move on to other books while giving students who took longer to read the support and time that they needed to get through the novel.

The novel focuses on choice--the fact that above all else, the choices that we make determine what happens in our lives. It also highlights the interrelationship between choices and the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Because it was the beginning of the year and the beginning of my students' high school careers, we focused on parallels between choices in the novel and choices that they were making in their own lives and as citizens within the school community. I used nonfiction and poetry supplements to enhance the novel and highlight the skills that we were developing.

The unit revolved around three essential questions:

• What does it mean to be an engaged learner?

• Why is it important to understand your role in society?
• How do we make choices and how do those choices impact our community?

As far as skills are concerned, I focused on point-of-view, characterization, tone, inference and close reading skills (including annotation). As we moved toward the end of the novel, we focused on theme and finding textual support to prove theme statements. The students completed plot questions and double entry journals for homework (I've attached a sample of that assignment below). For assessment, I used quick reading quizzes and daily formative skills checks. We had discussions and practiced the skills with supplemental readings. As far as major assessments, I used two skills assessments. The first was an excerpt from a major scene in the novel and the second was a cold reading passage. We also had a Socratic discussion at the end of the novel for which the students prepared, and the students wrote responses to some guided questions on Schoology prior to the discussion. For more information about Socratic discussions, see my previous post.

The document below includes the way that I broke up the reading, a description of their homework and a model of the double-entry journal. It also includes the homework for chapters 1-4. In the journals, the students moved from practicing inferences to tone and finally to theme statements. If you like this activity and are interested in having more of the packet, please feel free to contact me directly. These journal entries could certainly be modified to use in class as a way to reflect on and respond to the reading.

The final project required students to create their own factions. It was a research project and it included a group presentation. The students had to come up with the faction characteristics and create a name with a complex meaning. They had to find a possible representative from real life of that faction and research the person's life as an illustration of how that person demonstrated the traits of the faction, and they had to make connections to the novel with passages from the book. Here is a PDF of the assignment sheet, the rubric for the projects, the audience participation guide, and the peer and self-evaluation that I created last year.

Phew! That just about sums it up, I guess. I do have more materials and activities that went with the unit (in case you're interested), but I tried to include the major assignments and the general approach.  As far as changes for this coming year, I will likely NOT teach tone as one of the main skills with this novel. I discovered that because the novel has so much dialogue, many students became confused between characterization and tone. They would focus on a character's specific tone in his/her words instead of finding the tone of the passage, and it was challenging to explain the nuances of the difference. They found clarity as we looked at descriptive passages, but it was perhaps an unnecessary confusion. I might also drop the double entry journal entries down from two entries to one (or have them do one at home and one in class). The length of the novel was overwhelming for some students, so I will do more next year to help them with modifications as needed. We have a couple of copies of the audio of the novel, and one of our ELL teachers created chapter summaries of the novel that we'll use for struggling students. I'm also considering teaching Romeo and Juliet first this coming year so that students can take a field trip to see the play at the amazing Staunton replica of the Blackfriar Playhouse before it leaves in November, so I will likely introduce some of the concepts such as inference and close reading skills at an earlier time.

As a final thought, I'd like to encourage teachers considering teaching YA lit in the classroom to take the plunge. At my school, many people are very supportive--in fact, this last year, we purchased Divergent and the whole school read it at some point during the year. I know that may not be the case everywhere, but I find that we as educators can continue discovering the balance between classical, canonical texts and contemporary texts written for teens. Many students (both boys and girls)  told me that Divergent was the first book that they had honestly read from cover to cover, and that paved the way to a much more prosperous year as far as silent reading and setting individual reading goals. What I love most about YA lit is the way that the stories address complex issues (such as why wars happen and how to make difficult choices and face your fears) in ways that are accessible and appealing to teens.  I've read SO MANY amazing YA books that would work well in the classroom. The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare is amazing, as is the Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (how do I not have a post on that novel yet? Coming soon...) would be an awesome novel to teach, and it would work nicely as an exploration of text-to-text comparisons with a focus on audience since the film and novel are quite different. I also love the idea of teaching the first book in a series because that gives students a great jumping off point for their own reading. As far as realistic fiction, I just read Hold Still by Nina LaCour, which addresses the impact of suicide on a community, and our department discussed teaching John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, which includes teen romance, the role of fate, and illness.

Have you taught (or are you considering teaching) any YA lit novels in your class? Please share your comments and ideas! I look forward to learning what others are doing with this amazing genre.

        Summer is here! I thought for a while, especially after the feet of snow that we had in March, that it would never actually get here, but as I sit on the balcony at the beach in SC, I realize the incontrovertible truth that summer has finally come. Woohoo! I have big plans for this summer, including a ridiculously long reading list (I've brought home a giant crate of books along with another massive bag holding the overflow) and a gigantic revision of my writing. I just finished The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, a novel I started in March but just now came around to reading. It was awesome, and well worth the wait. I'm now plowing through four of Lauren Oliver's books, which I'm sure I'll write about soon enough. But alas, I did not sit down at my laptop to write about summer, or the current novels. I sat down here to write about the phenomenal series I read a few weeks ago, The Infernal Devices series (also familiarly called the Clockwork series) by Cassandra Clare.
           Where to begin with this? First, a confession (that may lower your view of me as a literary person): I do not particularly like Victorian literature. I've never been big on Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, or even Charles Dickens (though I did find myself strangely in love with Great Expectations when I was a sophomore in high school). I've never been a big fan of third person omniscient narration, nor have I enjoyed reading about the way that things were in the 1800s. In college, I focused on Postmodernism, and I was fascinated by deconstruction of metanarratives and the notion of the simulacrum in literature. In essence, I could not have been more removed from the study of Victorian literature.
        If you have not read this series, my rambling about literature undoubtedly seems irrelevant, but this all comes around to the fact that Cassandra Clare accomplishes a phenomenal feat in her series; she echoes the tropes and style of Victorian literature while creating a science fiction/ fantasy world full of suspense, mayhem, and intrigue that rivals anything in YA literature today. Set in late 1800s London, these novels include famous passages from the time period at the beginning of each chapter, and echo the style and description of the time period. They simultaneously challenge the traditional tropes of fiction, and Clare forces readers to grapple with the implications of stories and the way that we are all drawn into them.
        Translation for the teen reader and the classroom: I should say that these novels were recommended to me and brought to me by one of my freshmen students. She told me that I would love them, but to be honest I was a bit daunted by the size and by the notion of reading all of them before the end of school (you know what May is like for teachers). When I started Clockwork Angel, three different students approached me in the hall or during my parking lot duty to tell me that those novels were the best series they had ever read. I will say that the first one in the series takes a bit of work to get into the world of the characters, but it is well worth the investment. From about page 150 through the end of the third novel, I could not put them down. I haven't read The Mortal Instruments series (City of Bones) yet, so I cannot compare them. However, I can say that these novels address many issues, such as: discrimination, deception, the value of life, revenge, and the complexities of love. I can also say that they introduce students to the tradition of Victorian literature while also creating a world that is completely fantastical and that escapes from our own. I hope that you will place these novels on your summer reading list, and that you enjoy them!