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• have a greater understanding of the themes and issues we will be discussing throughout
the course of the unit
• develop prediction skills with the Prologue read-along activity
• begin to explore the differences between stereotypes and gender identity and its
implications in the real world
Materials needed:
Activities
Standards
NCTE #5
ISBE #1 C 3d
Lesson Plan: Week 1 Day 3, Gender expectations, Character
map, and popularity
Materials:
• Slideshow of photos of androgynous/cross dressing men and women mixed with
mainstream images of men as masculine and women as feminine
• Chart paper and markers to create a character map and chart popularity vs.
security
Activities:
Standards
NCTE #1
ISBE #1 C 3c
ISBE #1 B 3a
Lesson plan: Lani Garver Week 1 Day 4, Box Activity
• have a greater understanding of stereotypes and the dangers that come with them
• have a greater understanding of gender as a social construct
• be able to recognize the difference between describing someone and labeling
them
Materials:
Activities
Reflection (5 minutes)
• Have students choose a box and write a paragraph about what happens to the
people placed in it. Brainstorm ideas on how to change these stereotypes.
Paragraph will be due the next day.
Standards
NCTE #1
NCTE #2
Lesson plan: Week 2 Day 4, Teaching confessional poetry
with Lani Garver
• have a greater understanding of the term catharsis and its literary history
• have a greater understanding of confessional poetry and how it has impacted
writing today
• be able to creatively apply knowledge of catharsis and confessional poetry to a
character in the novel or their own life
Materials:
• Catharsis/confessional poetry PowerPoint
• Handout of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song”
• Song “The Night” by Disturbed
• Handout of lyrics to “The Night”
• Speakers
Activities
Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” compare and contrast (15 minutes)
• Break students into small groups of five
• Read poem in small groups, compare and contrast to Claire and her basement
lyrics
• What of Plath’s life is in her poetry? What of Claire’s life is in her lyrics? What
elements are cathartic?
• Come back to large group and discuss, check for comprehension
Standards
NCTE #1
Lesson plan: Week 4 Day 4, Teaching close reading with
Lani Garver debate
• have a greater understanding of close reading skills through the debate assignment
• be able to form their own opinion about the end of the novel/what happens to Lani’s
character
• develop paper outlining skills using the thesis “Lani Garver is/is not a floating angel as
evidenced by ________, ________, and ________.”
Materials needed:
Activities
Standards
NCTE # 3
Claire’s Identity Worksheet
We will use this sheet as we go through Lani Garver to track Claire’s growth and
development as a character.
Write two sentences about what we know about Claire’s past to this point.
Write three adjectives that you think describe Claire at this point.
How do you think Claire will change throughout the novel? What are you basing this on?
Reference at least two specific plot points from this section that you think will have an
impact on Claire as a character.
Chapters 6-11
Write two sentences about what we know about Claire’s past to this point.
Write three adjectives that you think describe Claire at this point.
How do you think Claire will change throughout the novel? What are you basing this on?
Reference at least two specific plot points from this section that you think will have an
impact on Claire as a character.
Chapters 12-18:
Write two sentences about what we know about Claire’s past to this point.
Write three adjectives that you think describe Claire at this point.
How do you think Claire will change throughout the novel? What are you basing this on?
Reference at least two specific plot points from this section that you think will have an
impact on Claire as a character.
Chapters 19-26:
Write two sentences about what we know about Claire’s past to this point.
Write three adjectives that you think describe Claire at this point.
How do you think Claire will change throughout the novel? What are you basing this on?
Reference at least two specific plot points from this section that you think will have an
impact on Claire as a character.
Chapters 27-33:
Looking back on what you’ve written, how has Claire developed as a character? Did you
like her better then or now? How has she changed? Who do you think she will associate
with now? Write a paragraph to summarize the changes Claire has undergone in this
novel, and what you think about them.
Lani Garver Final Project
Creative Assessment
We have discussed many different topics throughout this unit, many of them
controversial, and this is your time to make your personal voice heard and tell us where
you stand on one of these issues. Choose a gender/identity stereotype from Lani
Garver and come up with a creative interpretation at least two minutes long, like
Claire and her song lyrics, to break down the stereotype or raise awareness of it. You
may also choose to make your creative interpretation more like the confessional poetry
we read and relate it to your life and your identity.
A list of topics we’ve discussed:
• Masculinity
• Femininity
• Sexual orientation
• Gender identity
• Age
• Popularity
• Depression
• Eating disorders
• Hazing/bullying
You may also choose your own topic from the text so long as you clear it with me first.
Your creative interpretation should be in the form of a song, poem, rap, dramatic
monologue, or other artistic representation. You may also choose another medium so
long as you clear it with me first.
Reflection
Along with your creative assessment, you will write a 3-4 page reflection where you
discuss your thoughts on the issue you’ve chosen and how your creative assessment
relates to the action in the novel. This is not a formal paper, you are allowed to use the
first person, but you should still be quoting from the text. The reflection is due on the
day you present.
Grading
Creative assessment: 50 points
• Creativity: 10 points
• Organization: 10 points
Is Lani really dead? Is he a fallen angel? Is it all just a convenient recollection? These
are some questions that are raised by the end of Lani Garver, and we will be debating
the ending in class in lieu of a formal paper. You will use your close reading skills to
build an argument centered around the following thesis “Lani Garver is/is not a fallen
angel as evidenced by __________, ____________, and ___________.” You will be
broken up into two groups, and in those groups you must make a formal outline, as you
would for a paper, and then support each point with the text.
You may not move on to close reading and preparation until I have approved your
outline. You must have at least three strong points to argue or I will consider your
outline incomplete.
Grading
Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or "I." This style of writing emerged in the
late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass. Lowell's book Life Studies was a highly personal account
of his life and familial ties, and had a significant impact on American poetry. Plath and
Sexton were both students of Lowell and noted that his work influenced their own writing.
The confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century dealt with subject matter that
previously had not been openly discussed in American poetry. Private experiences with and
feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of
poetry, often in an autobiographical manner. Sexton in particular was interested in the
psychological aspect of poetry, having started writing at the suggestion of her therapist.
The confessional poets were not merely recording their emotions on paper; craft and
construction were extremely important to their work. While their treatment of the poetic self
may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a
high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of prosody.
One of the most well-known poems by a confessional poet is "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath.
Addressed to her father, the poem contains references to the Holocaust but uses a sing-
song rhythm that echoes the nursery rhymes of childhood:
• Research: 10 points
• Creativity: 10 points
• Creativity: 5 points
• Organization: 10 points
• Creativity: 10 points
• Message: 10 points
• Organization: 5 points
Debate: 30 points
• Reflection: 50 points
Total for unit: 300 points
Liana Alcantara
Hilarie Welsh
CI 402
21 April 2011
My unit is based around the theme of identity, more specifically how to deal with
identities outside the socially accepted norm. The specific identities we will discuss center
around sexual orientation, gender identification, and popular vs. unpopular. I have chosen Carol
Plum Ucci’s What Happened to Lani Garver? as the main text for this unit, though I will be
supplementing it with an excerpt from Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry, a song by Dar
Williams called “When I Was a Boy”, and other identity poems/spoken word pieces we find as a
I could have used many texts for a unit about identity, but I chose Lani Garver because of
its universality of theme. While it deals with potentially volatile topics such as sexual orientation
and gender identity, it does so in a way that makes students really examine whether these things
matter or not. A brief plot summary may help explain. The novel starts with us being told that
Lani was killed by a group of his fellow students because they thought he was gay, and his friend
Claire is the narrator of the story. She is in remission for leukemia, but she’s afraid she may have
relapsed. Lani comes to town and no one is quite sure whether he’s a boy or a girl, but he
befriends Claire and takes her to get tested for a relapse at a city hospital, and from there their
friendship strengthens as Lani helps Claire through her issues. Meanwhile, a bunch of boys from
the small town start harassing Lani because they think he’s gay, although this is never explicitly
said in the novel. In fact, it’s never said whether Lani is gay, straight, male, female, or even
human, as Claire starts to think that he might be what a nurse of hers called a floating angel, one
that doesn’t fight but floats from person to person that needs them, and leaves when they’re not
needed anymore.
With all of this going on, it’s pretty clear why I chose Lani Garver. Lani has a very telling
moment in the novel where Claire doesn’t know what or who he is and is trying to categorize
him, and he accuses her of trying to put her in a box. He points out that gay, straight, genius, and
many other labels are boxes to put people in, and they can be harmful. This is what I want my
students to understand: the harm in labeling everyone we meet. Boxing people up can perpetuate
prejudice and create awful situations like what happens to Lani in the text, but if we look at
people as individual people, we are much less likely to categorize and more likely to understand
As for why I chose this unit for this classroom and these students, it’s precisely because
these issues are universal. I could teach this unit with any class because the topics are important
for every student to learn. More specifically to my students, the novel is not a difficult reading
level, and it goes very quickly. I’ve broken up the novel into five chunks that each leave off at a
bit of a cliffhanger, hopefully to entice students into reading the whole book and not just relying
on classroom discussion. Also, I’ve spread this unit out over five weeks so that there isn’t more
than 70-100 pages due per week, which is perfectly manageable on top of assignments with what
I think what this unit shows most about my educational philosophy is my great desire to
teach students more than English skills, but life skills in conjunction with them. The topics in this
novel are culturally relevant to our moment, though the novel itself is about ten years old now,
and I truly believe that the discussions we will have based on this novel are discussions that my
students will be having for the rest of their lives. Some of the issues in the novel are highly
controversial, and I also feel that it is important to expose students to these issues in a place
where we can learn and debate simultaneously, so when they have these debates later in life, they
1) Students will have a better understanding of identity, both mainstream and otherwise.
2) Students will be more knowledgeable about issues of bullying and hazing based on
3) Students will brainstorm personal ideas about how to end discrimination based on issues
4) Students will have a better understanding of close reading through the debate assignment.
5) Students will have a better understanding of first person narrative, point of view, and