Since I’m not teaching my usual Dystopian Literature unit this year (in my 8th grade English Language Arts class), I thought I would take a few moments to share all the things that I’ve created and found throughout the years of developing my all-time favorite unit of the year!!

Introduction to Dystopia

I was skeptical to introduce the concept of “Dystopian Literature” to my 8th grade Language Arts students because I wanted to do the topic justice – yet make it accessible to my students (majority of them were EL learners at that point). I ended up designing and using this lesson (and accompanying activites) for one of my formal evaluations that year and the response of the administrators was humbling!

Check it out here: Dystopia Interactive Notebook Unit – Lesson, Activities, Short Story CCSS 

A powerful and effective class discussion is not something that most educators can pull out of thin-air. Here are five different statements that I use to spark class discussions around the concept of Dystopia (before ever reading any informational text or literature selection):

I initially dove into the whole dystopia/utopia concept from an educational standpoint because we were required to teach “The Giver” by Lois Lowry that year. Throughout that literature unit (of the course of a few years) – I had the opportunity to develop some great teaching tools and activities to accompany the unit. The activity that my students (across the eyars) loved the most and begged me to align with other pieces of literature is what I like to call:

“The Giver” Instagram Character Trait Activity: No-Prep, CCSS, Student Example

Well, that’s enough about what I’ve done (which could still use a lot of refinement)… and, as promised, here are some totally AWESOME resources and activities that I’ve scoured the web to find and they’ve each proven to be worth the hunt:

[coming tomorrow]