The Thief Lord Film/Novel Study Super Bundle (Editable)

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About this Unit & Novel
This bundle a Common Core-aligned literature study unit for use with the novel, The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke. The lessons and activities here span the curriculum, from vocabulary building, literary analysis & creative writing to argument building and STEM-centered inquiry. Prompts appear in order of complexity, and simplified language appears in parentheses (delete or modify as needed). The unit is editable so you can pick and choose which elements and prompts will work best for you.

From Goodreads: Two orphaned children are on the run, hiding among the crumbling canals and misty alleyways of the city of Venice. Befriended by a gang of street children and their mysterious leader, the Thief Lord, they shelter in an old, disused cinema. On their trail is a bungling detective, obsessed with disguises and the health of his pet tortoises. But a greater threat to the boys' new-found freedom is something from a forgotten past – a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself.

Unit Components & Features

LITERATURE RESPONSE QUESTIONS 

A set of 5-10 prompts for each chapter of the novel. Grouped for differentiated instruction, questions are split into these three sections:

• The Comprehending questions ask about plot. 
• The Analyzing questions ask students to draw conclusions and the novel and support their thinking with textual evidence.
• The Connecting prompts ask students to explore how their own worlds and lives reflect themes and raise questions that surface in the book. This novel raises some tough and complicated questions about child poverty, and the literature response prompts ask students to grapple with and reflect on personal experience with themes the reading raises. 

STEM EXTENSION ACTIVITIES

• Chapter 5 & 12 STEM Extension • Quizizz: Currency Conversion 
• Chapter 14 STEM Extension • Quizizz: Homing Pigeon & Animal Navigation
• End-of-Novel STEM Extension • Quizizz: Venice Is Sinking

MENTOR TEXT LESSONS 

Designed to integrate into a writing workshop and built around a specific writing strategy, each mentor text lesson asks students to read as writers—to pay close attention to elements of craft—and apply the mentor author’s writing techniques to their own works in progress. Passages from The Thief Lord serve as springboards for these exercises which also include:

• Slideshows, Quizizz games and/or explainer videos or infographics.
• Links to student writing samples that model approaches to applying the mentor author techniques under consideration. 
• Questions to guide discussions.
• Prompts, graphic organizers, sentence frames  and word banks to get students started.
• A  series of editable Revision Workshop hyperdocs to guide students through the revision process.

IN-DEPTH MENTOR TEXT MINI-UNIT 

• Mentor Text mini-unit: Magical Realism & Fantasy

A detailed, 1-2 week lesson plan & hyperdoc, this mini-unit is designed to spark and scaffold new creative writing projects, in-depth revisions to one in progress and/or build on concepts introduced in this resource’s mentor text exercises.

THE THIEF LORD FILM RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Questions here explore themes unique to the film with a focus on a comparative analysis.

EDITABLE CONTENT & FLEXIBLE FORMATTING

This unit is a bundle of Google documents, so you can easily modify anything here to fit your own needs. If you are new to Google docs, check the quick tips for navigating and editing this unit here. NOTE: This unit includes many links to other documents. To edit those, make your own copy first then edit your copy. If you want students to click your edited version, make sure to replace the old link with your new one in the doc students will access.