Students will work cooperatively, develop research skills, and identify the effects of character and setting on the story.
Students will identify characteristics of Victorian houses.
The setting of The Spiderwick Chronicles creates mood and provides many plot devices. The goals of this lesson is to provide students with important background information.
Dictionaries, class handouts, overhead projector and transparencies, computers with bookmarked websites and wiki, pencils, paper.
The teacher will show examples of familiar movie/tv Victorian houses and explain that students will learn what makes a house Victorian.
Show overheads of Victorian houses and other types of houses, point out different features of Victorians and their names. Students will have black and white copies with vocabulary to make notes on.
Using a transparency copy of the student handout, teachers and students will label the architectural features of a Victorian house. The teacher will point out three features that s/he would like in a bedroom.
Divide students into groups. All work in this section will be done within the small group. Students will go to the wiki page and as a group decide which of three photos represents a Victorian house. Then each student will pick and describe 3 features of a Victorian house s/he would like in a bedroom on the wiki page. Each student will comment on one other student's room by suggesting one more feature that might go well. Each group will also decide one one feature that they all like.
Groups will report out with their favorite feature.
Repeat lesson in brief with vocabulary related to estates of the Victorian era.
Resulting wiki page and teacher observation