Fantasy Book Clubs

What is fantasy and why do students have a love/hate relationship with it? Fantasy novels are incredibly complicated.  Some student shy away from complex texts or texts with unrealistic characters, plots, and settings.  Regardless of the students' feelings coming in to our fantasy book club unit, they alwasy end the unit loving the amazing stories, plot lines, and twists and turns that make up this genre.

For the past couple of weeks the 5th graders have been participating in these fantasy book clubs. Many groups have finished their first book while others are well on their way.  What I love teaching about fantasy books is how everything seems more exciting, dangerous, and alive in these books.  We have learned about the magical settings, watched the characters in our books change, and identified the internal and external quests that our characters are on.  

One idea that we intentionally spent multiple days thinking about and analyzing was the "dragons" that our characters were facing.  Many of these "dragons" were literal monsters, witches, and other mythical creatures.  However, we quickly realized that the characters in our books were facing many "dragons" within themselves.  Many of the characters are flawed and dealing with internal struggles.  We looked at the characters from our mentor text, The Thief of Always and identified different "dragons."  The students came up with so many different ideas, both literal and metaphorical dragons.

After we identfied dragons together, the students independently identified different dragons that their characters were facing.  They then met with their book clubs to discuss together.  I was so impressed with the conversations happening during their meetings.  So many students thought flexibly about this idea and were so creative naming different "dragons."  Some metaphorical dragons that I repeatedly heard were greed, curiosity,  and not appreciating what you have.  To check students' understanding, they completed an exit ticked in which they showed their learning about the dragons that their characters are facing.  I can't wait for all of the groups to find out how their dragons are defeated.