Introduction
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." —-Ray Bradbury ("Quotes by Subject" website)
Student Demographics
This unit is designed for my 9th grade Language Arts classes. First Coast High School is located in the northeastern quadrant of Jacksonville, Florida. Although the area is experiencing rapid growth in new suburban housing developments, 85% of our students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The student population is over 2000 and is almost exactly split 50%-50% rural white and urban black students. Only 24% of our 9th graders read at or above grade level. Over 50% of our 9th graders fail the 9th grade. My student's Lexile reading scores are at the 4th-6th grade level. Most have been retained in an earlier grade at least once. My students expect to fail, have resigned themselves to failure and have neither the energy nor interest in altering that outcome. (Duval County Public Schools)
Unit Mission
This unit is designed to lead students on a path of self discovery that will ultimately intrinsically motivate them to read. All of the reading material subject matter was chosen with that mission in mind. The 2005 National Initiative Seminar I attended, "War and Civil Liberties," immediately attracted me because I believe that our civil liberties will only remain intact if we have an educated populace. Thomas Jefferson said, "The one thing needed for a democracy to flourish is an educated population" ("Why Go to College?" website). I wanted to study American civil liberties and real attempts to curtail them in order to make them real for students. I knew I wanted to start with Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 but I also knew that in giving my students that book to read without any preparation to make it relevant to them, most would dismiss the book as wild science fiction that "could never happen in this country."
Through an exploration of fire, myth and symbolism, the history of organized book burning, and an in-depth study of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I intend to illustrate that refusing to read is exactly the same thing as voluntarily choosing indentured servitude; choosing ignorance. It is important to note that the tapestry being woven in this lesson will only be revealed through the study of Fahrenheit 451. The student will have already discovered all of the literary elements, symbolism and social issues that are represented in the novel. The mission will be completed when the student recognizes those elements and is able to internalize their meaning. Therefore it is a much longer unit than most that I teach. If done completely, it should take six to nine weeks.
All of the reading strategies employed adhere to the Florida Sunshine State Standards (SSS) and the Duval County Public Schools curriculum and are clearly delineated in the Strategies and Lesson Plan sections that follow.
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