Speak+Unit+Rationale

Unit Rationale

High school is a difficult time. It is filled with identity issues, popularity competitions, and even deep seeded issues adolescents have trouble vocalizing. A typical teenager feels that no one can understand them and no one else is going through the same thing: they feel isolated and constantly different. By presenting a novel, such as //Speak//, students will become engaged in a story about a young teenager going through many of the same anxieties most high school students experience. Speak is a novel easily relatable for adolescents. This story is narrated by an adolescent and written in the language that young adults can understand and relate to. The reader gets the feeling of being in the character’s shoes simply by the language used.

The narrator provides a point of view and inner-dialogue that can be appreciated by adolescents //and// adults. Sometimes adults can forget what it is like to think and feel as a teenager and it creates a perspective to foster understanding and empathy. While there are some dark issues being handled, it represents a true, honest depiction of how a teenager may try and handle such situations. It is not glossed over to represent the idealized way of handling a difficult situation, rather it is presented with a more realistic teenage response.

// Speak // also offers many opportunities to explore writing style whether it be metaphors, streams of consciousness, unusual language/terms, in addition to many other literary contexts. What is most beneficial to the text is the positive outcome of working through the emotions and learning to “speak” up for oneself. By presenting that ultimate goal meshed in with a real story, adolescents can parallel it more to their own lives. By creating a character in __which__ whose  shoes they can walk in, it helps teach the students how to problem solve within the safe constraints of this story. This technique can then be transferred into issues they may be dealing with in their own lives.

Teaching this novel not only presents new literary content to be analyzed, it also presents students with a text that is relatively easy to read and comprehend to spark their interest in reading material that can be relatable to them. By breaking the text down into individual marking periods (as broken down in the text) student will explore important concepts and relate these concepts to their own lives. For example, students will examine their own social circles and how they compare to those Anderson describes. By engaging students in this relationship early on in their reading, they will be able to understand where Melinda is coming from as the novel continues.

At the end of each section in the book, students will also identify themes, characters, symbolism, and the tone presented in each marking period by adding these together in the form of sticky notes (leaves) on a tree. By the end of the novel, these __tress__ will provide a thorough overview of the development of the main theme throughout the novel: society and solitude.

Throughout this unit, students will draw on their own experiences, alternative texts, and their own creative imaginations to create an understanding for the characters of the novel and the role this situation plays in reality. //Speak// is a great book to use in the classroom. It introduces topics that are serious to the lives of students and are necessary to discuss with young adults but is not in lecture form. It is in a format that is humorous yet allows the student to understand the thoughts that are going on in the character. By the way it is written, //Speak// will inspire the students to read more.

Why is "Solitude and Society" and appropriate theme for this particular book? What role does "society" play in it? What characters or groups represent "society" in this book?