Going Beyond the Usual - Part 1

One of the requests I often get from class­room teach­ers is for project ideas suit­able for gifted stu­dents. This is the first in what I hope will be an ongo­ing series of posts with sim­ple ideas for going beyond the usual to tap into the needs and inter­ests of your stu­dents look­ing for more chal­lenge. Here are some ideas for how to spice up your read­ing projects.

Author Study

Read sev­eral books by one author and look for com­mon ideas, themes, and pat­terns. Does the author’s writ­ing style change from book to book? Or read a biog­ra­phy of an author and one of his or her books. Do you see any con­nec­tions or parallels?

Topic Study

Read sev­eral fic­tion books about one topic or his­tor­i­cal period. Com­pare with fac­tual books about the topic and see how the authors incor­po­rated fact into fiction.

Award study

Read many books that won a par­tic­u­lar award (such as the New­bery or Calde­cott Awards) and see if you notice fea­tures that they have in com­mon. What did the review­ers look for in choos­ing a book to receive the award?

Genre study

Read sev­eral books in a genre and fig­ure out what makes a book fit that cat­e­gory. Are there books that could fit in more than one genre? Are there books that don’t seem to fit any genre?

Cre­ate an Anthology

An anthol­ogy is a col­lec­tion of writ­ing by many dif­fer­ent authors. Usu­ally there is a theme that con­nects all the pieces. Read a large num­ber of pieces about a par­tic­u­lar theme or idea and select ones to put into an anthol­ogy you are cre­at­ing. List each title and explain why it belongs in your book.