Foreword

The Dropas Literature Guide was written to assist teachers in their efforts to build and develop critical thinking skills for students. Students today are active receivers and producers of knowledge. They shape their thoughts and actions through experiential learning and become empowered to think critically as a maturing educated learner.

Using literature as a basis for teaching and learning takes a vast amount of effort and preparation for the practitioner and the student. Creating an environment whereby Plato’s Allegory of the Cave becomes evident to all learners will encourage lifelong enduring learning and enable the practitioner to become the facilitator and the student as self-directed and accountable for their learning.

The major focus of this literature guide reflects the importance of reading by children through projects and opportunities to expand and deeply develop the underlying meaning and symbolism within the text. This is accomplished by leading the student through the use of reading strategies like predicting, connecting, inferring, synthesizing, and evaluating the textual content in relation to current societal and world events.

One of the hallmarks of this literature guide is an integration of several subject areas and the modern fantasy genre. The practical suggested assignments and projects provide concrete ideas for classroom implementation.

Enjoy the adventure—
 

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Introduction

The Dropas series was introduced to the public in the Fall of 1999. Shortly after that, I began developing author programs that included Book Readings, Book Discussions, After-School Book Clubs, and by far the most popular, Creative Writing Workshops. I was delighted to hear stories from participating teachers about their students’ high interest level and increased desire to read and write. Who wouldn’t be? Having received this overwhelming positive response to the stories, I created this Literature Guide to further develop enduring learning about the Dropas.

Before beginning this project, I reviewed numerous source books available. I found it very convenient that the ones I reviewed included worksheets. However, I also found myself continuously thinking, “I would have designed this differently (or) if this was changed then it would be appropriate.” With that in mind, I decided to maintain the guide’s flexibility and leave a portion of the creativity up to the individual teacher.

It is well known that students have many different aptitudes, abilities, and learning styles. In addition, the classroom dynamics usually change from year to year with each class. As a result, I focused on identifying lessons (or exercises) and connecting them with major themes of the story, with the specific intent of allowing each teacher to detail the activities in the way that best fits his/her students. I did provide worksheets, templates, and/or detailed instructions of what was intended for many of the lessons. The choice to use the recommended worksheets, templates, and examples is left entirely up to the facilitator of the exercises.

Each chapter has been conveniently summarized, and a table has been created that lists challenging words extracted from each chapter. Where appropriate, passages from the story have been identified and page numbers have been provided. These are key passages that are interesting and reflect various ideas, emotions, and details of the story. Use them as a foundation to build upon a Dropas Unit or create an entirely new one. Activities that include a worksheet or template are tagged with a bold (WS), usually at the end of the description. Finally, the appendix provides additional information pertinent to the premise of the story and useful for numerous lessons, as well as the worksheets and templates that appear in the same order as listed in the table of contents.

— Scott R. Etters

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Table of Contents