The American Literature Honors classes have been busy working on the cereal box projects. Sophomores in the American Literature Honors class will be decorating cereal boxes and writing an in-class essay about one character from their book, The Great Gatsby.
Recently, students in South Windsor High School’s American Literature Honors classes read The Great Gatsby. Gatsby follows the story of a wealthy man in New York, who explores the social dynamics of those who are wealthy as well as those who are poor.
Students in the class have been analyzing character complexity, figurative language, and theme. Using what they’ve learned over the course of the semester and their creativity, students will be able to create their cereal box.
“We used to do some creative pieces in American Lit., but this year we haven’t had time to fit a couple of those pieces in, so we really wanted to give students an opportunity to do something creative, but it was still challenging,” American Lit. teacher Mrs. Kelsey told the Prowl.
The cereal box contains multiple parts. For the cereal brand and front of the box, they will have to create a title and tagline that represents their character, and fake cereal pieces that represent the character through symbolism.
The right side panel will include character analysis, using the nutritional facts, where students will use character traits and character conflicts to describe them. The back of the box will include an interactive game that represents character complexity conflict.
In addition, the left side panel of the box will include a theme/SIFT analysis, using a passage from the book. Lastly, students will create a ‘prize’, a symbolic object that represents the character’s transformation, conflict, or “what if” alternate outcome.
Students will be graded based on their creativity, and original thinking, their ability to identify symbolism, imagery, figurative language and tone, their ability to analyze characters, and explore internal conflicts, motivations and complexities. Students should be able to go beyond-surface level to analyze characters for their project.
This hands-on project is different from previous assessments in the literature class, as students usually write in-class essays based on stories they have read for the first time. This project requires much more than being able to write and analyze quickly.
“My favorite part about the cereal box project has to be the creative aspect of it, and the wide range of possibilities given due to the given materials provided by the library,” sophomore Lana Kim told the Prowl.
