by Jerome Tiller, in Lesson Plans

Some of the best classroom discussions led by teachers in my early school years involved literary works, usually fiction. Teachers found fiction to be especially fertile ground for classroom discussions because no student could ever truly be right or wrong. Students knew they were entitled to their own opinions about themes, characterization, motives, etc. Everybody had their own interpretation about the stories, and nobody would tell them that theirs were wrong. Classroom discussions about fiction often got students who rarely spoke-up in class to offer their opinions. Students were safe with fiction. They couldn’t be wrong.

We select, adapt, and design stories for the Adapted Classic collection with classroom discussions in mind. Even the illustrations by Mark Johnson-Pencook, though primarily attention grabbers that enhance the entertaining stories, could easily be topics of classroom discussions themselves. In this way they provide a rounding effect unmatched by stories lacking illustrations.

Coming Soon

A giant step short of a classroom discussion is a bullhorn blog. I will make use of this instrument in the coming weeks to mention various topics for classroom discussion arising from the stories and illustrations in the Adapted Classics collection. Also coming soon, I will announce the publication date of our first ever hardcover edition of an Adapted Classics story. It’s a new Adapted Classics creation that’s about creation - “Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Eve and Adam”. We would like to transport some wine and cheese through cyberspace to celebrate this upcoming announcement, but we have an old computer. Consequently, you will have to provide your own. We suspect you agree that creation is worth celebrating, so go ahead - we’ll join you. If you happen to be a middle-grade reader and not a teacher, well…you know. Lay off the wine and drink some juice instead.

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