The wonderfully written middle grades graphic novel When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed is Omar’s recount of his life in a Kenyan refugee camp. Life is challenging in the camp: food is hard to find, school is limited, medical care is almost non-existent. And Omar has to take care of his brother who has special needs. This is a powerful story that can be used from 5th grade through high school. One of the strengths of this graphic novel beyond the powerful story is the richness of the visual imagery embedded within the text.
There are many, many things teachers can do with this novel. Students can read about the different Kenyan refugee camps or watch this Politics and Prose video where the authors of the novel share their stories.
With my students, we did a number of things. There are two in particular that I will share today.
Collaborative Found Poetry
Found poems take existing words, phrases, lines from a text and are reordered into a poem. A literary collage of a text. In this instance, each student in their groups of 4-5, found 2 significant lines. Lines that stood out to them personally. Lines that were powerful. Each student wrote their lines down and shared them with their small group. Students then worked to write 1 poem using the lines from the text (see image 1). Students shared the poems with the whole class, and we discussed themes that arose out of reading the poetry.
There are many, many things teachers can do with this novel. Students can read about the different Kenyan refugee camps or watch this Politics and Prose video where the authors of the novel share their stories.
With my students, we did a number of things. There are two in particular that I will share today.
- Collaborative found poetry to uncover themes.
- Characterization Posters
Collaborative Found Poetry
Found poems take existing words, phrases, lines from a text and are reordered into a poem. A literary collage of a text. In this instance, each student in their groups of 4-5, found 2 significant lines. Lines that stood out to them personally. Lines that were powerful. Each student wrote their lines down and shared them with their small group. Students then worked to write 1 poem using the lines from the text (see image 1). Students shared the poems with the whole class, and we discussed themes that arose out of reading the poetry.
Image 1: Example of Collaborative Found Poetry.
Characterization Posters
In my experience, characterization can sometimes be tricky for students as they tend to stick to what the character looks like. We expanded this to include not only the physical description, but also each character’s personality, thoughts, and actions, and how other characters think/act around the focal character.
Each group chose their favorite character and were given the following assignment sheet.
In my experience, characterization can sometimes be tricky for students as they tend to stick to what the character looks like. We expanded this to include not only the physical description, but also each character’s personality, thoughts, and actions, and how other characters think/act around the focal character.
Each group chose their favorite character and were given the following assignment sheet.
Image 2: Assignment Sheet
The items in the list are adapted from an assignment by Melanie Hundley and are concepts that we have been working on in class. These criteria (i.e. adjectives, similes) are skills that we had been practicing and when mashed together in this assignment make a nice way to discuss characterization and see what all students have learned. You can change the criteria to skills that you’ve been working on in your class. You can ask students to complete the assignment alone or in small groups. There is lots of room to play with this assignment. See image 3 for example posters of the character Fatuma from the novel When Stars are Scattered.
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