From SAT Prompt to Book Project

Following a class of strategizing and writing SAT essays, I began Monday's class with a warm-up that asked students to identify the most effective and most challenging elements of executing a timed writing. Many professed new-found love for brainstorming and planning before writing. We also discussed what you lose in this kind of writing situation: revisions, time to write conclusions.

From there, I tried to make a somewhat tenuous transition from SAT to final free choice book projects. The link was that students would be using the spirit of SAT prompts to compose an ethical question to be used in exploration of their book. I spent a few minutes drawing a web diagram that went from universal theme/essential question to individual stories to specific characters and events.

The last fifteen minutes of class, students worked to frame these questions. They also worked on project proposals, for which I gave them several standard guidelines. Some interesting proposal so far:
-Make a telescreen message to the class for 1984.
-Build a kite for Kite Runner
-Create an eHarmony profile page for a book I can't recall.