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To Kill A Mockingbird

John Tyler

Killing Mr. Griffin

Grade: 8

My sponsor teacher Valerie O’Leary during my short practicum recommended Killing Mr. Griffin, written by Lois Duncan, to me. The basic plot was outlined for me and I found the idea of teaching a book about killing an English teacher to be an interesting notion, especially in this day and age. Taking home a copy, I began reading the book and found myself reading this differently than I would have read others. I was very analytical when covering different areas, constantly thinking about how to teach one area or another. Despite making several notes throughout I soon realized that I had read the entire novel in just two sittings.

I had to question why I was able to read this novel so quickly. There is the obvious – that it was written targeting an adolescent audience, but there is more than this to the answer. This novel covers a wide variety of topics that are related to adolescents but of specific interest to me. Two of the major themes pervading this novel are the reactions of choice equally consequence and peer pressure. As you will see throughout my unit plan these two themes are touched on at various points. I am a firm believer that the two are connected and those young adults need to learn at an early age that they do have a choice. They need to learn that answering questions with a shrug of the shoulders and “I don’t know” is not a sufficient answer to questions. Everyone has choices in everything they do and I would like my students to learn that there are positive choices that yield positive consequences and there are negative choices that yield negative choices. Directly related to this is the topic of peer pressure. Yes adolescents face peer pressure but they have a choice. All of the students that are involved in the prank, that goes terribly wrong and leads to Mr. Griffin’s death, have the choice of joining in or saying no. They all succumb to one character that is portrayed as the leader, but they can not be portrayed as powerless in this incident. These characters had choices to make and now they must face the consequences of their actions.

There are many other facets to the novel that will be touched upon throughout the unit through a variety of tasks. The bulk of the written responses will only be graded on the completion of the task. Comments will be provided on the writing but writing errors on these reflections will not result in a lower grade. This will provide the students a forum to explore the ideas and themes we are looking at without the stress of worrying about the various writing rules.

Overall, I found this book to be an exciting read and I believe the subject matter will be interesting to a wide variety of students. The central characters are both male and female, which provides the students with five different people to whom they may identify. There is teen romance, action and suspense, which will draw in many of the young adult readers in my class.