http://www.teacherplaces.com/leec/weblog/51.html

Well, I thought I'd copy Melissa's idea to let others know how the core novels went for me and my students.  I think I can say that Melissa and I probably had similar experiences.  I read Among the Hidden with my 9th grade classes (3 of them) and Slumming with my 10th grade classes (2 of them). 

I think Among the Hidden is a great way to start.  The reading itself is not challenging but there are very interesting issues for the students to contemplate and discuss.  Actually, my students hated the audio at first.  I told them to get through 5 chapters and then if they didn't like it, we'd stop listening and I could read out loud.  But after five chapters, all classes voted to continue with the audio.  Also, like Melissa's kids, we quickly got to the point when they complained when we were stopping and begged to hear more.  There were several times when I had to point out that we had less than 2 minutes left in class and that's why I wouldn't allow us to continue on to the next chapter.  The suspense/cliffhangers at the ends of the chapters make Among the Hidden an ideal book to begin with. 

After reading about Melissa's interactive word wall, I decided to try more with the vocab.  I had them start playing with concept circles.  For example, I put propaganda, rally, revolution, and crusade together and asked students to explain how those words are connected.  Then I gave the title of "change" and asked them to explain how they're related to change.   Then I had them categorize words and make their own circles.  I also gave them circles and asked them to fill in a related word.  It makes so much sense that they'd do better with the words if they're thinking about how they're related to other things and I found it much more successful that way.  I look forward to the next core novel where I can use Melissa's word wall idea and the concept circle together.

I will say that Melissa and I had one difference.  My students felt that I had them do too much while we were reading.  I think I got a little carried away with the different strategies and graphic organizers.  So, I'll need to tone that down next time I teach this.  But the book was really a success.  In fact, although I had copies of the sequels already in my classroom, I had to go buy more because the kids wanted to keep reading about Luke.

I would say that my 10th graders were less enthusiastic about Slumming.  My 2nd period class was so quiet, I often wasn't sure whether they even liked the book.  But almost every single 10th grader said it was good and that I should read it again with my classes next year.  The reading of Slumming is definitely more challenging because there are 3 different points of view and the readers have to do a lot more inferring.  Those are the things we focused on as we read.  We used the graphic organizers to keep track of what we knew about each character and what we could tell about them from their words and actions.   

This is a great novel to have students talk about how people are judged.  We had some great discussions.  The fact that there were 3 very different main characters really broadened our discussions.  For example, Alicia led us to discuss how blind girls can be sometimes when it comes to guys they're attracted to.  We looked at the inferences she made about him and the evidence she based those inferences on and the kids agreed that she made faulty inferences.  But we also agreed that all of us have done the same or know someone else who has.  I'm glad that I was able to do this novel with my 10th graders because I think we had much more mature conversations than the 9th graders would have had.  But, this might be perfect for the 9th graders after we've had a few novels under our belts, and especially after they've discussed novels in the lit circle format.