Students loved this day, as did I - it functioned as a "four corners"-esque activity where students took stances on themes that would come up in The Catcher in the Rye, and then debated each other and justified their stances, posing follow-up questions and counter-arguments. It also served as an engaging and relevant way to pre-teach themes from a text we were starting.

This lesson shows my weird side a little bit - I dressed up a pot, filled it with flashcards containing adjectives, and then rebranded it as the "tonal urn." I've brought this one back a few times in my student teaching, since students loved it so much. It's creative, engaging, and lets me get just a little theatrical. Check out these slides for more information on how the lessons actually worked!

Here's my instructional template for lit circles, an instructional strategy I used often when teaching A Separate Peace. Students would sign up for roles and contribute to group slides projects that analyzed a chapter of the text holistically.