Geneva Reads: Community Read Activity Guides

1
Geneva Reads Community Read Activity Guides

• Joy Gitter, Chiara Favaloro, and Danielle Mueller
• Hobart and William Smith Colleges

 I used many of the questions in the reader's
guide that my students completed as they
readTheir work saved me a lot of time searching
for and creating my own materials. Mrs.
Castor, teacher at St. Stephens Elementary school
Hatchet
Into the Wild
I kept certain goals in mind while creating the
guide in order to make it fun to work with for
both teacher and students. I wanted to make sure
that I was not only hitting on all of the key
plot points and turning points in terms of
character development, but I hoped that my guide
would serve to enhance the student's experience
with the book. I also wanted to provide the
students with numerous learning opportunities to
make sure that they began to push themselves to
dig deeper into the text and get more from the
novel than just plot points. In order to do this
I made sure that students were pushed to read
closely, and gain new perspectives on life while
reading the novel Danielle Mueller, WS
16
I loved Into the Wild when I first read it the
summer before my senior year of high school, so I
wanted to further explore and analyze it by
creating this reading and activity guide for high
schoolers. When creating the reading and
activity guide to accompany Into the Wild, I
tried to design activities that were at an
appropriate level for high schoolers. I targeted
important skills such as close reading,
vocabulary expansion, analytic and opinion essay
structure, creative thinking, and connections
across disciplines Joy Gitter,
WS 16
Geneva Reads Community Read 2014
Geneva Reads is a non-profit that strives to
improve literacy by having the whole community
read one book, with different books centered
around a common theme for younger kids. For
this years Community Read, the themes were
self-reliance and nature. These themes were
explored through the books Into the Wild for the
community and high schoolers, Hatchet for middle
schoolers, Stone Fox for grades 3-5, and The Raft
for grades K-2.
Stone Fox
The Raft
I wanted to create a guide for Elementary
School students because the students I had worked
with at America Reads were in third and fifth
grade. Therefore, I felt my prior experience with
younger students would be beneficial when
creating this guide. While creating these guides,
I really enjoyed trying to think of aspects of
the curriculum that could be academically
challenging while also fun for the students to
partake in Chiara Favaloro, WS
16
This guide was slightly challenging because I
had to make activities that would be accessible
to very young readers. Therefore, I included a
lot of fun and educational activities, such as
going to the HWS Boathouse or creating a raft out
of art supplies. I felt that this would be more
beneficial than posing challenging analytic
discussion questions Chiara
Favaloro, WS 16
Our Process

• As a part of Jack Harris Sociology of
  Community class last semester, we worked with
  Geneva Reads to fulfill the service learning
  aspect of the course.
• We were each inclined to take on this project
  because we have an interest in improving
  childrens literacy, and have previously worked
  as tutors for America Reads.
• We created student, teacher, and family guides
  for the books included in the Geneva Reads 2014
  Community Read program.
• Using the books, one another, and our community
  partners and project advisors as inspiration, we
  each created a guide to accompany one of the four
  books.