Our Looking for Alaska Topics will get learners engaging with meaningful topics the novel raises:

★ Your Cause for Hope

★ The Labyrinth of Suffering

★ The Great Perhaps

★ Teenagers are Invincible

Our essay prompts are ideal for . . .

→ End-of-unit conversation starters

→ Writing journals

→ Literary analysis essays

→ Literary analysis speeches

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY IMPLEMENTATION

Learners will choose from a four deep quotations from John Green's novel Looking for Alaska and write a 2-3 page grade-level essay analyzing how that theme is portrayed for the characters in the novel and what it means for how humans (including yourself) live their lives. What is it saying for humanity? And for you . . . no-hassle grading rubrics are included to make your teaching life easier and for easy, effective grading and feedback. These discussions really bring home the biggest topics of the story and guide learners through discussing the text in an analytical writing process.

The Response to Literature rubrics are small enough to be portable and have been refined over years of essay grading to include most of the comments you'd want to write on an essay. Included 4-to-a-page for easy photocopying/chopping. This makes the grading process much faster but still allows the teacher the ability to give some feedback. Essays can take so long to grade, can't they? But a rubric like this really speeds up the process for us.

INCLUDES:

* Instructions handout

* Rubric (4 to a page)

TEXT: LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

LEVEL: 9th - 11th
COMMON CORE:

→ CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1,2,3

→ CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1,9

→ CCSS.ELA-SpeakingListening.SL4,6

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WHAT OTHER TEACHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS ESSAY RESOURCE

♥ I LOVED using this. I loved how there were multiple options of responses for my students to choose from and how all of them really required them to think about their responses and all we have learned in ELA. The rubrics were also perfect for assessing their responses and I used them for all my Literary Analysis assessments. Thanks!

♥ This is an excellent lesson because it allows the student to choose the topic they will analyze (character, setting or theme) and also a choice between essay or speech.  Only 3/34 chose to do the speech, and they surprised me with their very thorough analysis. I did find, however, that the students need a lot of pre-writing (small group discussion) of the topics in order to come up with an outline.  It was absolutely one of the best writing process essays we did.

♥ The students loved the fact that they had a choice of an essay topic. The essential questions that were asked made my students think beyond basic character analysis. The essay rubric and scoring was a time saver as well. 

♥ This was a great assignment. The organization of the assignment made it easy for my students to prepare and write quality essays. I like this response to literature as well as the checklists for students to make sure they've included mechanics. The rubric was thorough and made it easy to be consistent in grading.

♥ Loved these prompts! There was something for everyone! I was able to use this as a final exam prompt for my class and the responses I got were fantastic!

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OTHER LOOKING FOR ALASKA HURRICANES:

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Unit Teaching Package (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Character Organizer (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Plot Chart Organizer Diagram Arc (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Last Words Activity (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Quotes Analyzer (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA YouTube Discussion Activity

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA YouTube Discussion Activity PowerPoint

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Essay Writing Prompts (by John Green)

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Poster - Great Perhaps

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Poster - Labyrinth

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Poster - Cause for Hope

> LOOKING FOR ALASKA Poster - Hurricane

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