Our latest books for our Real Teens Read literature group were One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin. The younger kids only read Breaking Stalin’s Nose, but both groups got together for our activity and discussion day. These books pair together very nicely. We learned some background […]
Language Arts
Real Teens Read 2014 Book List
Our Real Teens Read Book Club is getting ready to kick off a new semester. The teens read one or two titles per month along with poems and short stories, then we get together for a literature discussion meeting. The teens learn the historical background and use literary analysis to delve deeper into the readings. We […]
Real Teens Read: Ender’s Game
Our Real Teens Read group read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and the following poems to accompany the novel: “Fire and Ice” and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooks “The End of the World” by Archibald MacLeish “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen “The Unknown Citizen” by […]
Real Teens Read: To Kill a Mockingbird
Our teen literature discussion group just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and we met last week to discuss the book and some poetry selections, and to watch the movie version. The teens were totally engrossed in this film and were visibly moved by it. The teens filled out character charts as they read, […]
Real Teens Read: The Diary of a Young Girl
Our Real Teens Read group read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl this month. Powerful, beautiful, engrossing, heartbreaking — this memoir should be required reading for everyone. What a delightful, vibrant young woman she was, and what a talented writer! I found this month to be tough, because I couldn’t get through much of the history […]
Real Teens Read: Romeo and Juliet
It’s Shakespeare month for our Real Teens Read literature group, and we are looking forward to seeing two live performances–Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Watching the 1968 movie is a way to clarify what they are struggling to read, and it was a great motivator for the teens. They have been busily reading different versions of Romeo and […]
Hands-on: The Outsiders
Our Real Teens Read novel for March is a blast from the past: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. Raise your hand if you remember reading this as a teen! What about the movie? Be warned, it will make you feel old to see baby-faced Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise. Oh, how I miss Patrick […]
Real Teens Read: The Giver
The first novel we read in our Real Teens Read literature discussion group is The Giver by Lois Lowry. It had such an impact on the group, that we find ourselves relating almost everything else we read to it in some way. We have discussed the archetype of the main character’s journey in this book and how it is […]
The Ultimate Guide to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I have the pleasure of exploring the new enhanced eBook from the genius behind Jump Into a Book, Valarie Budayr, and her collaborator Roscoe Welply. The Ultimate Guide to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is chock full of fun, including: Over 20 Crafts and Activities that not only entertain, but educate. Ever wonder where chocolate comes from? Or how […]
Creative Writing Activity: Chopped
My oldest son is a writer, and now my niece has caught the bug as well. They love to go on Skype together and collaborate on stories and scripts. When we visited my brother’s family over Christmas, the two of them sat side-by-side with their laptops almost the whole time, working on a book and […]
Teaching Analogies
Teaching critical thinking skills begins early, and Animalogy: Animal Analogies by Marianne Berkes, illustrated by Cathy Morrison, is a fun way to introduce analogies to young kids. Sylvan-Dell publishes some of the finest books on the market for both classroom and home reading. Animalogy keeps kids interested and intrigued as they study the beautifully detailed illustrations of […]
Jump Into Treasure Island
We’ve been participating in Jump Into a Book’s Summer Reading Adventure, and we just finished reading Treasure Island, the classic by Robert Louis Stevenson. Our Treasure Island Days It was admittedly a difficult book in some ways for all of my boys to get into, mainly because of the style of the language, but in the end, we all […]