Anchor Text:

• The Giver by Lois Lowry

Supplemental Texts and Materials (all available on NewsELA unless otherwise noted):

• "Students blame government for inaction on climate change"
• "US Government Report: Climate Change is Real"
• "Earth can heal from global warming if countries stop using coal, group says"
• "Earth's biodiversity is disappearing, according to U.N."
• "Kirbati: The Face of Climate Change"
• "U.N. report says climate change is rapidly hurting the Earth's land"
• "Trump and EPA to pull the plug on Obama's clean power plan"
• "Trump signs order that will boost oil, gas, and coal production in the U.S."
• "Politicians divided as they debate Green New Deal"
• "This 18-year old is suing the government over climate change"
• "Hockey league is being proactive to fight the threat of climate change"
• "Fight climate change before it's too late, say youth around the world"
• "Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act"
• YouTube clips of movie version of The Giver

Proposed Innovations:

This portion of the website is incomplete. I already use a focus on Climate Change when I teach The Giver but I would also like students to read with an Indigenous and/or Latino Lens. Since this book is pretty white, I would like students to imagine where the people of color went? Why blond hair and dark eyes? Why not brown skin? Why is Sameness so Caucasian? Since Indigenous Futurism has a focus on the past and on the land, and since we are using climate change as a mentor text for informational writing, I would like students to connect memory to the land. I would also like them to think about boarders the way Latino Futurism does. The river in the novel is a boarder, much like the Rio Grande is a boarder. People of the community are not supposed to cross it unless on "official business." How is this like country boarders? How is Jonas and Gabe's escape like that of a refugee?