Here’s a question I dug up from my teaching days (The Challenge was a story in our reading program, you can replace it with something you read.)
Is The Challenge an example of non-fiction, historical fiction, or realistic fiction? Support your answer with three explicit details.
The problems? It’s another low-level, one-off question. By most brilliant writers are stuck merely telling me “It’s realistic fiction.” There’s nowhere for them to go next.
So, here’s a sequence I’d use instead. Note how it moves around on Bloom’s Taxonomy!
The Update
Note: Each “Part” is a Checkpoint. Students have to get a check from me before I hand them the next Part. This maintains quality (“I think you can do better, Jimmy”) and helps me spot students who need some help (“Oh, ok let me show you how to do that…”). Most importantly I catch problems early. Before implementing Checkpoints, I wouldn’t be aware of problems until the very end of the task. Then it’s too late to do it right.
There’s no reason for students to even see Part 2 if they cannot do Part 1 well!
Part 1: A New genre. Imagine The Challenge as either a science-fiction story, a fantasy story, or a piece of historical fiction. What key details would you need to change? What could stay exactly the same?
Part 2: Rewrite a piece. Start by rewriting just the climax of The Challenge into the new genre.
Part 3: Why would this be better? Write an email to the publisher, explaining how this new version of The Challenge will be more interesting while keeping the best of the original.
Want to keep going?
- Students can read their classmates’ versions. Which version do they think is the most unexpected? Create an award for that student. Write a speech.
- And/Or, continue rewriting the rest of the story in the new genre. Create an advertising campaign for the new version is. Then film a commercial advertising the rewrite. Etc, etc.
The final product should flow naturally from the higher-order thinking my students have been doing. I’m not just going to tell my most brilliant student to “draw a picture of their story.” That’s busy work. No, I’d make the picture part of a persuasive advertisement. Maybe we’ll make three pictures with each one targeting a different audience: children, parents, aunts/uncles.
Hopefully, you can see how this sequence moves around on Bloom’s Taxonomy. It gives students somewhere to go once they can identify the genre. It’s got differentiation built-in (not bolted on).
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