Into The Wild

Rationale:

This book offers students a look at the difference between nonfiction and fiction. We can see in this book how nonfiction events can be just as powerful. This book covers important topics such as family dynamic, changing your life, and how we live our lives. Students can see how someone can want to change their life based on how they grew up.

Teaching ideas:

To have the students better understand the characters we could have them analyze the relationships between father and son and how it influenced the choices made in the book. Another thing to consider is have the students write what they would have done differently to go live out in the wild like this. What they would have wanted to make sure to bring and what choices they would have made differently. There are 3 things that I would want my students to analyze while reading: alienation, individual and society, and nature. These three things can be analyzed together or separately, but one thing the student needs to understand is how they work together and how they do not.

Challenges:

This is a book based on real events and that can be hard for some to read, especially since the main character dies at the end of the book. For students: we need to outline the events and make sure to keep going over that how the ending could have been avoided. Making sure that students understand what they are to learn from the book. For parents: lay out the rationale for reading this book and why it is important for students to read this book instead of a fiction story that covers the same issues. For administration: it is the same as the parents we need to lay out the rationale for picking this topic and why it is important to cover this book instead of another.