By Chelsea Byrd
Eighth-grade students in Mr. Griffin’s and Mrs.Byrd’s classes read novels together for honors and academic English. Honors students read The Year the Lights Came On by Georgia author, Terry Kay. It is a coming-of-age story about a small, Georgia town getting electricity thanks to FDR and the Rural Electrification Administration. Kay’s book is formatted without named chapters. So, students were tasked with naming ten chapters, providing an artifact to represent the chapter, and a piece of evidence to support the chapter title. Then, they had to tie it all together and justify their ideas.
Academic students read Spooked: How a Radio Broadcast and The War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America by nonfiction narrative writer, Gail Jarrow. She weaves a story of setting the East coast up for a believable hoax right before Halloween. Her goal is for readers to understand the importance of checking your facts. Students were asked to research a real hoax and then turn it into a believable podcast story, similar to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast.
All of the students spent Monday observing, discussing, and listening to projects published by their peers. As they observed, they focused on elements of projects they found impressive like the most creative chapter titles or the most believable story. Lastly, they wrote down whose project they would most likely emulate and why.
