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Excellent product, easy to use, ready for immediate classroom use. Well organized by chapter and provides short quizzes for groups of chapters in the novel to ensure kids are reading. Excellent connections, journal activities that go well beyond the literal comprehension of the novel. A must have.
This book is my everyday tool in class and at home. I used it to help my nephew in book report and for me to teach it to my students. Great help.
There are several reading strategies and activities to motivate your readers in this guide book. I think it is very useful for those who may be teaching this novel for the first time and a new tool to get a new perspective on the novel for seasoned educators. I found that it had some great ideas, Anticipation Guides, project ideas, and research topics.
There are pre-reading activities to generate interest in the book (themes such as justice and prejudice, as well as a brief biography of Harper Lee) as well as a few ideas for teachers after the novel is finished (there is a list of research topics for this time period that is helpful for teachers who want to generate some related topics). For instance, there is a section on Urban Myths and Myths, which ties into the character of Boo Radley. I thought that this guide was definitely worth the money that was paid for it. Each section has study questions for each of the 6 sections (it is actually listed as the Quiz section). Overall, although only 48 pages in length, I felt this was an excellent buy. Vocabulary lists for each of the novel sections and a few vocabulary activity ideas are also included (examples: part of speech chart for vocabulary words, word puzzles, etc). There are several other neat ideas that can be used directly or adapted by the teacher into another activity.
There are ideas for Southern Cooking (if that's your thing) and a section on understanding similes and metaphors (which are quite frequent in the book). The teacher created materials guide for To Kill a Mockingbird includes a table of contents which divides the novel into 6 different sections (for example, Section 1 includes Chapters 1 through 5 in the book). There are questions for conducting an interview of "The Great Depression" that could be used as a take-home assignment for a student. I found this section extremely beneficial because it saves so much time to already have a list of difficult words generated for the students. Although some of the questions are a bit general (example, List three important events from this section), overall the questions fit quite well within the scope of the novel and can be used as a tool for checking comprehension. Also, there is a characterization chart for four of the main characters (Scout, Jem, Atticus, Dill) as well as a section that discusses the ideas of theme and examples of racial hatred and discrimination. It is very organized and quite helpful for a teacher needing extra resource material for a novel.
As a teacher, I greatly appreciated the section devoted to vocabulary building -- so much easier than compiling the list of words myself. We purchased this guide and the Cliff Notes to aid us in our monthly book club meeting for March. (See our review of To Kill a Mockingbird -- both the film and the novel). And we all found the sections on the author, the Great Depression, urban myths, and figures of speech great jumping-off points for discussion and further research. It may seem that you get more for your money from the Cliff Notes, but my experience was that we turned to this slim volume more frequently and that it generated better reader response.
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