In this unit we will read the classic American novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee as part of our year long investigation into our theme of "Justice".
The following questions are the big ideas of the unit.
What is the purpose of learning?
How can I use what I've learned to grow?
Why is clear communication important?
How does my knowledge of the world help me to solve problems?
The Phantom Tollbooth tells the story of a bored kid named Milo, who takes an exciting journey through a magical kingdom, and in the process learns that life (and learning, too) isn't so boring after all. In fact, every single word in this book is fun.
This book helps us to put ourselves into a fantasy world, absurd situations, and grapple with challenging dialogue in a way that is fun, exciting, and ultimately helps us to understand that learning for learning's sake can be fun. As we project our experiences onto Milo in his adventure, we start to understand that everything we know has a reason and everything we do has a rhyme. All the while we can use skills for inferencing, context clues, and prediction to follow what happens next while also exploring wordplay, puns, descriptive language, symbolism, and the themes of communication, language, time, education, and cleverness.