Geneva Reads: Community Read Activity Guides

Joy Gitter, Chiara Favaloro, and Danielle MuellerHobart and William Smith Colleges

Geneva Reads: Community Read 2014

Geneva Reads is a non-profit that strives to improve literacy by having the whole community read one book, with different books centered around a common theme for younger kids.

For this year’s Community Read, the themes were self-reliance and nature. These themes were explored through the books Into the Wild for the community and high schoolers, Hatchet for middle schoolers, Stone Fox for grades 3-5, and The Raft for grades K-2.

Our Process:

• As a part of Jack Harris’ “Sociology of Community” class last semester, we worked with Geneva Reads to fulfill the service learning aspect of the course.

• We were each inclined to take on this project because we have an interest in improving children’s literacy, and have previously worked as tutors for America Reads.

• We created student, teacher, and family guides for the books included in the Geneva Reads 2014 Community Read program.

• Using the books, one another, and our community partners and project advisors as inspiration, we each created a guide to accompany one of the four books.

Hatchet

Stone Fox

Into the Wild

The Raft

“I loved Into the Wild when I first read it the summer before my senior year of high school, so I wanted to further explore and analyze it by creating this reading and activity guide for high schoolers. When creating the reading and activity guide to accompany Into the Wild, I tried to design activities that were at an appropriate level for high schoolers. I targeted important skills such as close reading, vocabulary expansion, analytic and opinion essay structure, creative thinking, and connections across disciplines” – Joy Gitter, WS ‘16

“I kept certain goals in mind while creating the guide in order to make it fun to work with for both teacher and students. I wanted to make sure that I was not only hitting on all of the key plot points and turning points in terms of character development, but I hoped that my guide would serve to enhance the student's experience with the book. I also wanted to provide the students with numerous learning opportunities to make sure that they began to push themselves to dig deeper into the text and get more from the novel than just plot points. In order to do this I made sure that students were pushed to read closely, and gain new perspectives on life while reading the novel” –Danielle Mueller, WS ‘16

“I wanted to create a guide for Elementary School students because the students I had worked with at America Reads were in third and fifth grade. Therefore, I felt my prior experience with younger students would be beneficial when creating this guide. While creating these guides, I really enjoyed trying to think of aspects of the curriculum that could be academically challenging while also fun for the students to partake in” – Chiara Favaloro, WS ‘16

“This guide was slightly challenging because I had to make activities that would be accessible to very young readers. Therefore, I included a lot of fun and educational activities, such as going to the HWS Boathouse or creating a raft out of art supplies. I felt that this would be more beneficial than posing challenging analytic discussion questions”

– Chiara Favaloro, WS ‘16

 ”I used many of the questions in the reader's guide that my students completed as they read…Their work saved me a lot of time searching for and creating my own materials.”

– Mrs. Castor, teacher at St. Stephens Elementary school