For my literacy project, I chose to create a Historical Fiction Unit for my 5th grade

class. My class is rather diverse. Although it is located in Glastonbury, CT, the Social

Economic Status is lower in my school than in any of the other elementary school

located in Glastonbury. I tried a few different things with my class and was very happy

with the overall journey that we traveled on together.

First, I wanted to see how students would do with choosing to read their own

Historical Fiction books. My teacher allowed me to do this within the constraints of

giving the children a Fountas and Pinnell reading level range that they had to choose a

book within. I was rather happy with this and thought that the class all got to choose

books that were good for them to read. I felt the books were more interesting to them

because they got to choose! Over a two week period, I conferenced with my children

every week and kept notes on how much the students were enjoying and understanding

in their books. Every day I would do a read aloud from a Historical Fiction picture book

and would use the book for my mini lesson. I would then have students complete an

assignment using their own Historical Fiction book that related to the mini lesson. For

example, students had to identify one day which character held the power in the story,

and we examined if and how the situation is different today.

After this two week period, I decided to spend a month on Historical Fiction book

clubs with my students. My teacher and I placed students into homogenous groups

based on reading level. Each group received a book that matched their reading levels

that my teacher and I picked out. We tried to think about who was in each group and

their interests before assigning each book.

 To prepare for these book clubs, I created a four week book club packet that

outlined some of the things we had learned in the last two weeks as well as added new

topics. The first day of book club I had each group meet and establish a set of goals and

rules for their club. Then, each student signed the bottom of the rules and goals. This

page was the first page of their book club packet. I then allowed the clubs to break up

their reading into eight sections. This way, when the book club would meet on

Wednesday and on Friday, everyone in the group would have read up to the same point

in the book. For the most part, this worked out well. The second day, I sent my students

links to different articles about the historical parts as well as geographical parts of their

books that were important to research and understand before jumping into the books.

This was helpful to fall back on when some of the books’ more challenging dynamics

were talked about later on in book clubs.

Each week, the assignments in the packet had four main tasks that needed to be

completed by Friday of that week. I compiled a list of different “sticky notes” that

students could choose a set number of to be completed each week. For example, some

of the sticky notes were a prediction, a character change, or visualization. I gave

specific instructions for each sticky note, as well as sentence frames for some. The

second main section after the sticky notes was a timeline event page. I had students fill

out one or two timeline events which included a title, the chapter the event took place

and three supporting details about the event. Then, I had two other main sections that

varied from week to week. These last two sections were bigger assignments. For

example, one week I had students write a paragraph in the first person, as if they were

a particular character in their book and their thoughts, feelings and experiences at the
time. They then had to write a second paragraph explaining why they thought, felt or

experienced what they did by giving supporting evidence from the text. Along with that

assignment, the students had to determine one of the themes from their Historical

Fiction text and use supporting evidence from the text to explain how it was a theme, as

well as how it can be related to everyday life.

Each week students collaborated with one another and we discussed how to use

different talk moves during book club to facilitate a more natural, inclusive discussion.

Students at the end of each week did a self-assessment of their written work as well as

their participation and performance in book club. Each week I then gave them my own

grade on both of those topics.

Finally, the culminating assignment in the packet was to interview an adult that is

at least 20 years old. The purpose of this assignment was to have students see real

world examples of how time period affects the experiences that people have. We spent

a day sharing our interviews and comparing and contrasting them to our own lives and

experiences to see how important time period really is.

Afterwards, I had students work in whatever grouping they wanted (individually,

in pairs, as an entire group) with their book clubs to create and I-movie book trailer

selling their book. This was basically like an electronic book talk. We spent an entire

week making our scripts, choosing pictures, sounds, videos, recording voicing and

writing words into the trailer. I showed examples and non-examples online of book

trailers other students have made. I gave time to switch trailers with another group and
to chat about what was strong and what could be stronger in each. We celebrated and

watched our I-movies one day with popcorn!

Finally, I had my students prepare a script to book talk the book that they read for

this project and had them share this and their I-movies during a Books and Bagels

event that I held this week at school for parents and students. Everyone loved the I-

movies as well as their book talks! I gave the students time to rehearse these before

parents came in to see and they really hit it out of the park! I was so impressed with

them. Overall, I loved the flow of this unit. In the future, I would like to try the book clubs

idea withal different independent reading books that are on the same topics and just

have open ended questions that directed at the theme of the book or topic.