#473. The Giver

Literature, level: Middle
Posted Tue Jun 16 21:19:00 PDT 1998 by Robin Shreeves (binxter@usa.net).
Lambs Road Academy, Sewell, USA
Materials Required: automatic 35mm camera, black and white film
Activity Time: one class period

After reading The Giver by Lois Lowery give your students the chance to see things as Jonas saw them before he could see color.

The day before the activity, take the last ten minutes of class to make a list of things in Jonas' world such as a red apple, a shelf of books, blue eyes, red hair - anything that can be captured on film.

The next day take the students around the school armed with cameras with black and white film. Specialty camera shops now carry a black and white film that can be processed with the one hour C41 processing so you won't have to wait a week for the photos to come back.

After the film is developed, have the students write an introduction to the project - kind of like they were writing a few paragraphs introducing a magazine photo spread. Then have the students put the photos onto posters with captions underneath them. Hang the posters and their introductions on the wall.

My kids loved this. They had never worked with black and white film before, and it was a fun activity for them to see what Jonas saw before he could see color.
My older classes that did not read the novel were all jealous of my 8th graders who got to do the project. They thought it must have been a fun project.