Brown Girl Dreaming by J.Woodson; A CCSS Aligned, PDF & Digital Book Study

OVERVIEW:

If you like to inspire, teach, and motivate your students using award-winning, literature, don't overlook this amazing memoir: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (2015 Newbery Honor Award, 2015 Coretta Scott King Award, 2014 National Book Award, and 2015 E.B. White Read-Aloud Middle Reader Award). Use this PDF, custom-made, no-prep, CCSS aligned memoir-study to help your students focus, understand, and stretch themselves as they read. If you want to use it with distance learning, this packet also allows the buyer the option of downloading it as an Easel by TpT digital product that can be assigned, completed by the student, and turned-in on any device. Be sure to download the Easel Activity that I created: it is the student workbook in digital form with textboxes already added and ready-to-go.

NOTE: If you are planning to use this book as a read-aloud, I also have created a Listen-and-Respond version that you may want to consider. Many teachers have students listen and respond to the workbook on their devices or on paper as they listen,

Included in this packet is a student booklet that guides the student in reading and understanding Jacqueline Woodson's free verse. You will end up with a concrete assessment of their learning and they will end up with both inspiration and greater understanding.

This product is a ready-to-use PDF packet designed for teachers to use with students in grades 5-8 who are reading Woodson's 2014 childhood memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming. It contains a 40-page student booklet (which may be used as worksheets) that divides the text into 8 reading assignments with several pages of questions and tasks that go with each one. A separate answer key is provided.

The student booklet provides questions and activities for students to complete after each of the reading assignments. The activities are aligned with CCSS and are designed to be enjoyable, instructive, and able to be completed independently. Reading and writing skills/crafts that are introduced and/or reinforced include:

1. focusing on/responding to text

2. using/creating a family tree

3. interpreting free verse

4. demonstrating comprehension

5. simile recognition

6. metaphor recognition

7. onomatopoeia recognition

8. personification recognition

9. idiom recognition

10. oxymoron recognition

11. haiku

12. summary writing

13. inferring

14. explaining

15. clarifying

16. main idea/theme

17. visualizing

18. map skills

19. timeline skills

20. compare/contrast

21. writing free verse.

22. setting influence

BROWN GIRL DREAMING IN A NUTSHELL:

This book is written in free verse rich with imagery and is a memoir of Jacqueline's childhood and a look at the events that shaped her family and herself. Whether or not your students (grades 5-8 and older) are "into" poetry, they will most definitely find this an insightful and meaningful window on her life and simultaneously US Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s & '70s. Reading her verse is a rich experience for anyone who picks up this book; the reader will be easily drawn into the life and times of Ms Woodson.

Woodson is a FOUR time Newbery winner in addition to winning many other prestigious awards!!

AWARDS FOR BROWN GIRL DREAMING:

2014 National Book Award

2015 Newbery Honor Award

2015 Coretta Scott King Award.

2015 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award: Middle Reader

CLIP ART CREDITS:

 design on cover & assignment pgs: dreamstime.com (http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-butterflies-flowers-stars-text-image3055504)

 frames by misstiina (http://www.sugarhillco.com) and KPM Doodles (teacherspayteachers)