A Novel’s Final Test Part I (Grades 5-12)

Giving students a final exam about a novel unit sometimes becomes a test of: matching, mulitiple choice, true false, and short essay.  Aside from the essay portion, none of these exam parts truly shows student mastery and digestion of what was studied during a given novel unit.  Therefore, I suggest something completely different for any novel study.

Have your students plan their own novel, while reading a curriculum based novel.  Students can use journals to do this.

 Day 1: Fears

The first three days are spent developing a conflict for their novel. On Day 1, I have students describe something they are afraid of.  You can draw two columns on the board, explaining that fears can be physical (illness, disease, disfigurement, snakes, thunder) or mental (loneliness, embarrassment, failure, insanity.)

 Day 2: Principle

Preface this piece of writing by quoting on the board Martin Luther King, Jr.:” Every man should have something he’d be willing to die for. A man who isn’t willing to die for something isn’t fit to live.”  Then ask the students, “What are you willing to die for?” “What is so important to you that you just cannot back down on it?”

 Day 3: Conflict

To introduce conflict, first explain its Latin meaning: “to collide with.”   Tell the students, “To create a really good conflict for your main character, make your fear collide with your principles.”   Think of a movie or novel that most students are familiar with and present conflict using that material for an example of fears colliding with principles.  Then, make up spontaneous examples with the class:  a man afraid of flying must fly an airplane when the pilot has a heart attack.   A woman afraid of roller coasters must leap on one that is out of control to save her son.  The goal is to get students to express their conflict in a single sentence, while applying the “fear colliding with principle” formula.

 Day 4: Characterization

The students may use the following checklist to create their main character.

• Name the character
• Create a physical description: gender, age, appearance
• Create a dominant character trait: perseverance, courage, shyness
• Create a personal background:  childhood, education, relationships, profession
• Create goals and obstacles that interfere with those goals
• Show how goals are reached and the way the character changes in the process

 Day 5: Setting

This need not take long; students simply should describe where the novel takes place.  For example:  The story is set in a large city, in Illinois.  The time is 1875.  Most of the people in this city are middle-class.  The character’s house sits near Lake Michigan, about two blocks from a university town.  The novel begins on an October evening, a Saturday.