Rationale
My fifth- grade students are at a unique time in their lives. They are the oldest students in our school, and therefore hold a somewhat privileged position. Many assist teachers in roles of responsibility, such as safety patrol and office and library helpers. Others help out in the kindergarten or in classrooms where children have special needs. One can easily see that they are "trying on" a variety of roles. Developmentally, these students are moving on from what Piaget characterized as the concrete stage of development to the cusp of the formal operational stage. They are capable of thinking in more abstract ways. Logical thought and the ability to draw conclusions are becoming more evident. It is the beginning of a very vulnerable time, as they will be leaving the comfort of their longtime elementary school for the wider world of adolescence and the middle school years.
The purpose of this unit is to explore the ways that we connect to fiction and characters in literature. In particular, it will focus on the way in which characters change throughout a piece of literature. We will examine the brain science behind this ability to immerse oneself in a fictional world and explore its extension to evaluating character and attributing motives in our own. Activities in this unit will provide students with the opportunity to delve deeply into the fictional world of characters with the focus on understanding how and why we connect with fiction and the very real implications it can have in their own lives.
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