The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Ohio school year runs from July 1 to June 30, so our annual 900 required home education hours fall into this span... which means that Big Girl's high school U.S. Literature class with me has begun.  I won't make any promises about posting everything we do in this class, but here's what happened in July thus far.  I told her it was a warm-up.

Big Girl read The Giver by Lois Lowry and kept a list of words specific to the community described in this novel as well as some notes on theme(s).  When she had finished the reading, we discussed The Giver in general and her assignment in particular.

Further joint discussion centered on a variety of topics including utopia vs dystopia, infanticide, euthanasia, active vs static characters, external and internal conflicts, euphemisms, open/ambiguous endings, and the themes of sameness vs individuality and conformity vs self-expression.

Next, Big Girl was assigned an essay.  She had two topics from which to choose and decided to discuss whether the role of Receiver of Memories was an honor or punishment for Jonas.  The essay went through three independent drafts which we reviewed together each time.  The final essay will be added to her home school portfolio.

As a last discussion, Big Girl and I tried to find some parallels between Nazi Germany under Hitler and the dystopian community in the novel.  We closed out our July warm-up by watching the 2014 movie version of The Giver and talking about how it compares to the book.

(Home education hours logged for this unit: 17)