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Goal

As adults we know that reading can inspire, enlighten, challenge, and transport the reader. Our goal is to bring all of those experiences to ninth grade readers as well, beginning with Into Thin Air, a personal account of the Mt. Everest disaster. We plan to use literature to expose our students to accounts of people overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds through perseverance and problem solving. The lessons in this unit will focus on reading skills, strong character traits, and include connections to the social studies curriculum. 

What will be done with my students

The students will engage in various activities as they read Into Thin Air to develop a range of skills:
• Analysis of plot structure and the effectiveness of a personal account: How does the point of view of the narrator effect the account? How does this apply to every day reading of current events?
• Organizing information: developing a timeline of events and discussing the causal effects involved in the account. How do one’s decisions effect a situation?
• Connecting information across curricula: Students will connect the geographic elements and themes found in Into Thin Air with those in the AP Human Geography and AICE English General Paper classes to reinforce their content-area understanding.
• Socratic Seminar/debates: Students will engage in these forms of structured discussion to deepen their understanding of the text as well as learning to employ elements of logic and argumentation.
 

Benefits to my students

As ninth grade students enter a new stage of their academic career, literacy educators use texts as a catalyst for independent thinking and analysis of the adult world they are joining. Studying books like Into Thin Air provide opportunities for those skills to be developed with a text that is engaging, even to a reluctant reader. This title, among others in a unit of study, challenges the students to think from a new perspective and broaden their scope of global knowledge. These skills are critical as they move forward to become educated young adults.

One of our goals as literacy educators is to foster a love of reading, and putting books in kids’ hands is the first step on that journey. The short-term benefit of this grant is having enough copies of the title for each student to borrow and read her/his “own” copy. Ownership of a book, even if temporary, adds to the connection between reader and text. This connection provides opportunities for reflection and deeper understanding which is necessary for students to mature as readers.
 

Budget Narrative

The cost includes 75 copies of "Into Thin Air" purchased on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com 

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