The Skin I'm in is a beautifully crafted chapter book, and it can be used to inspire historical fiction and historical diaries from your students.
Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:
Inspired by the main character’s attempt to deal with the circumstances of her life in The Skin I’m In, students will create a diary entry for a historical character that somehow parallels their own lives. In Flake's novel, Maleeka transforms herself through her writing by creating diary entries for a girl on a slave ship. Students will think up a historical character whose life's events might parallel the events in their own lives, and they will create a sensory-filled diary entry from the voice of that character. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.
6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:
The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; the writer’s goal is to create a diary entry that includes interesting, high-quality details, especially sensory details. The support trait of this assignment is word choice; incorporating sensory-based adjectives, verbs, and nouns into the diary entry is something that will be stressed before the students begin their rough drafts.
