Historical Fiction Book Club Unit: Author Study Ruta Sepetys Inquiry in ELA

If you love Ruta Sepetys YA Historical Fiction novels such as:  Salt to the Sea, Out of the Easy, I Must Betray You, The Fountains of Silence, and Between Shades of Gray, this is the perfect unit for you to try!  Organized in a Book Club / Lit Circle style, this unit provides students their choice of novel while still providing an organized and cohesive approach that doesn’t leave you feeling all over the place.  United under and Essential Question, students move through their individual novels with different stories, but while all building the same skills needed to uncover history and make meaningful arguments.

This is the COMPLETE BUNDLE: it's the combination of two halves to make a whole inquiry driven unit.

The Novel Unit:

These are the components that strictly connect to the Sepetys historical fiction novels. The formative assessments are written for these novels, the summative is written to highlight the features of her novels, and the book club workbook is designed thematically around these novels.

The EQ Unit:

The EQ Adventure Pack is what extends this unit beyond the novel chosen for book club. The EQ Unit pairs the novel choices with supplemental poetry, podcasts, documentaries and more. The EQ Unit provides evidence trackers, a synthesis writing summative assessment, and tools to make the connections between the novel and the supplements happen. The EQ Unit is what is used to practice the skills of synthesis -- putting an emphasis on connecting multiple pieces of texts (as opposed to studying the novel as the sole focus).

A FRESH APPROACH TO TEACHING LIT CIRCLE UNITS:

If you’ve been hesitant, unsuccessful, or bummed about the way a lit circle / book club unit has turned out for you in the past, I can assure you, I’ve been there.  If you’ve been to nervous to try this kind of unit because it seems like a lot of work and a lot of moving pieces -- you’re right!  It is!  To alleviate all of these stressors, here’s what I’ve done to make teaching this unit easier for you and still challenging for students: 

• Student Facing Workbook
  • In order to keep things feeling cohesive, a complete workbook (issued at the start of the unit) helps keep students on track and connected to each phase of the process.  The workbook is broken into thematic weeks that create a cognitive stretch for students as they progress throughout the unit.

• Teacher Slide Deck (paired with the workbook)
  • Take the guess work out of running each week’s book club meeting with this slide deck!  The deck is thematically aligned, contains timers to move students through each portion of the meeting, and provides a front-of-class way of keeping students on task.

• Anchored in an Essential Question
  • So many teachers struggle with book club units feeling disjointed or too lethargic in their pacing.  By connecting the different novels through the thread of the EQ:  How does history get buried, and why should it be uncovered?, engagement soars as students see a purpose in each of their chosen novels.  The EQ is also directly connect to their end of unit assessment:  a defense of an object from their novel that deserves to be uncovered.

• An Emphasis on Synthesis
  • From the evidence trackers to the venn diagrams, this unit focuses on helping students combine their knowledge across texts to come to original ideas and conclusions about the Essential Question.

Be sure to check out the preview for each of the individual items to get a more complete picture of the unit as a whole. A calendar / pacing guide with a video tutorial is provided to help you combine these two units to make a whole.