The Literary Maven Leaps Into Literature

Here at the Literary League, we’re a group of English teachers who truly love literature (we bet you already figured that part out). Given free time, we can all agree that there’s nothing better than leaping into a good book. But, even as avid readers, we have to admit that those spare minutes tend to be few and far between, especially during the school year, and there are times that we just have to …

• leap into a book recommended by a friend, a colleague, or especially a student, who is anxiously awaiting our review
• leap into a new novel we’re teaching, whether or not we’ve had time to fully prepare a complete unit
• leap into a classic, maybe not one of our favorites, but something we know students need to sit with in order to grow as a reader

For those instances, the Literary League is teaming up to share some of our favorite resources to help you Leap into Literature. These are resources that are not tied to a particular book, but ones that can be used over and over again, both with your favorite novels, as well as with new texts or classic pieces you’re trying to breathe new life into.

One activity I use engage my students in literature is creating literary postcards. This activity is
incredibly versatile. It can be done with any grade level and any text, during or after reading. Students first select an important scene from the text to illustrate on the front of their postcard. Then on the back side, they reflect on that event in writing from the perspective of a character of choice.

The writing on the back of the postcard can take a variety of forms. Students can write a postcard from one character to another. They can write a diary entry or interior monologue or even a poem. Students could write a series of postcards from the same chosen character's point of view based on different events in the novel. 

You could also select one specific event to focus on, assign students different characters, and then compare the reactions of different characters in students' writing. You could assign students different characters and have them write back and forth to each other. The possibilities are endless. You can read more about this activity and see additional student samples here.

 
You can read about other engaging literature resources from the other Literary Leaguers linked up below and also enter in the rafflecopter below for a chance to win them all.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up