Tale of Despereaux Literature Kit (Novel Study Guides)

Please note that a brief synopsis of many of the books included here are provided in our Library Builders section. Study guides for the same book are often available from several publishers, so we found it more efficient to give a description of the book only once.

Useful and flexible – that about sums it up for these easy-to-use novel study "kits." Weaving in critical thinking skills (based on Bloom's Taxonomy) with reading comprehension, vocabulary, and analysis, the kits provide everything you need in a single worktext with an excellent price point. Designed for both teachers and students, this one volume provides good, "just-enough" teacher guide info coupled with reproducible student handouts.

Teacher material is in color and includes an assessment rubric, plus some general teaching notes and strategies. A story summary, suggestions for further reading and vocabulary lists are included here along with graphic organizers selected specifically for the novel being studied. The graphic organizers are in color also and can be projected, used on an interactive whiteboard, or reproduced.

Novel chapters are divided into ten groupings with grayscale student handouts for each grouping. These handouts are reproducible and provide reading comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, short answer questions, and a journaling prompt. Additionally, there are six specific writing tasks/projects for each novel. At the end of the study, there is a vocabulary wordsearch and a comprehensive quiz.

It is not expected that all these activities will be completed – or so says the teacher info. This means the student can work at their own pace and that the teacher can match the work with the student.

While these literature kits aren't quite as strong in the area of literary analysis as some, they are user-friendly and comprehensive with good support information and activities. ~ Janice