The Hobbit Lesson Plan | Introduction
This unit has been designed to develop students' reading, writing, thinking, and language skills through exercises and activities related to The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. It includes twenty lessons, supported by extra resource materials.
The introductory lesson introduces students to the idea of an adventure through a writing assignment. Following the introductory activity, students are given an explanation of how the activity relates to the book they are about to read.
The reading assignments are approximately thirty pages each; some are a little shorter while others are a little longer. Students have approximately 15 minutes of pre-reading work to do prior to each reading assignment. This pre-reading work involves reviewing the study questions for the assignment and doing some vocabulary work for some vocabulary words they will encounter in their reading.
The study guide questions are fact-based questions; students can find the answers to these questions right in the text. These questions come in two formats: short answer or multiple choice The best use of these materials is probably to use the short answer version of the questions as study guides for students (since answers will be more complete), and to use the multiple choice version for occasional quizzes. If your school has the appropriate machinery, it might be a good idea to make transparencies of your answer keys for the overhead projector.
The vocabulary work is intended to enrich students' vocabularies as well as to aid in the students' understanding of the book. Prior to each reading assignment, students will complete a two-part worksheet for several vocabulary words in the upcoming reading assignment. Part I focuses on students' use of general knowledge and contextual clues by giving the sentence in which the word appears in the text. Students are then to write down what they think the words mean based on the words' usage. Part II nails down the definitions of the words by giving students dictionary definitions of the words and having students match the words to the correct definitions based on the words' contextual usage. Students should then have an understanding of the words when they meet them in the text.
After each reading assignment, students will go back and formulate answers for the study guide questions. Discussion of these questions serves as a review of the most important events and ideas presented in the reading assignments.
There is a vocabulary review lesson which pulls together all of the fragmented vocabulary lists for the reading assignments and gives students a review of all of the words they have studied.
Following the reading of the book, a lesson is devoted to the extra discussion questions/writing assignments. These questions focus on interpretation, critical analysis and personal response, employing a variety of thinking skills and adding to the students' understanding of the novel. The discussion question list has been shortened in this unit because of the project that is included. It takes many of the topics that would normally be discussed in the extra discussion questions lesson and has students focus on those items in greater detail. Two lessons are devoted to individual or group reports about these topics.
There are three writing assignments in this unit, each with the purpose of informing, persuading, or having students express personal opinions. The first assignment is to write about an adventure they have had or would like to have. It gives students the opportunity to express their own thoughts and ideas, and to practice some creative writing. The second assignment gives students the opportunity to practice writing persuasively. They are to persuade Bilbo either to go or not to go with Thorin & Co. The third assignment is to give students a chance to write an informative composition. It serves the dual purpose of helping students focus and organize the information they have gathered while working on their projects and helping the teacher evaluate the project work.
In addition, there is a nonfiction reading assignment. Students are required to read a piece of nonfiction related in some way to The Hobbit. After reading their nonfiction pieces, students will fill out a worksheet on which they answer questions regarding facts, interpretation, criticism, and personal opinions. During one class period, students make oral presentations about the nonfiction pieces they have read. This not only exposes all students to a wealth of information, it also gives students the opportunity to practice public speaking.
The review lesson pulls together all of the aspects of the unit. The teacher is given four or five choices of activities or games to use which all serve the same basic function of reviewing all of the information presented in the unit.
The unit test comes in two formats: multiple choice-matching-true/false or short answer. As a convenience, two different tests for each format have been included. There is also an advanced short answer unit test that is more difficult than the other tests.
There are additional support materials included with this unit. The unit and vocabulary resource sections include suggestions for an in-class library, crossword and word search puzzles related to the novel, and extra worksheets. There is a list of bulletin board ideas which gives the teacher suggestions for bulletin boards to go along with this unit. In addition, there is a list of extra class activities the teacher could choose from to enhance the unit or as a substitution for an exercise the teacher might feel is inappropriate for his/her class. Answer keys are located directly after the reproducible student materials throughout the unit. The student materials may be reproduced for use in the teacher's classroom without infringement of copyrights. No other portion of this unit may be reproduced without the written consent of Teacher's Pet Publications, Inc.