Craft Lesson 3: Titles (Making Predictions)

Materials:
Book: Acceleration by Graham McNamee

Discussion:
We can consider a title of a book the doorway into the story. For a writer, the title helps to get a story started. Many students, when first writing, just slap a title onto their page but end up not matching their title with their story. The title is an important factor when creating a story and we as teachers should discuss different titles with students and help them in making predictions about the stories by the title, and then discussing whether the story matched their predictions.

How to Teach It:
Do you ever wonder why a writer gives a book a certain title? What does the title of the book tell us about the story? Maybe the title relates to what happens in the book, something the character does or what happens to them, or the title is the general theme of the book. A writer uses a title to enter a story and get it started. As they write the story, the meaning is discovered. Once a writer completes a story, they often go back and reconsider their title to see if it matches what the story is about. They may ask themselves, “Does this title give the reader a doorway into the story?”
When you read a book, you first read the title and then look at the cover to get a general idea of what the book might be about, right? Consider the title of this book: Acceleration. Say it with me- Acceleration. Raise your hand if you have heard that word before. What do you think “acceleration” means? (Allow some students to give responses and write them on chart paper). Let’s look at the cover and see if it can give us some clues to figure out what the title means. What do you see on the cover? (Allow students to give as many items as they see and explain what they might symbolize. Help them out a little with items they cannot distinguish) What do you think the pictures on the cover tell us? Do you think the scary face, cats, subway, and written words connect in some way? (Feel free to give students hints and clues. Continue with the discussion to the point where, as a class, you have discovered that “acceleration” means “an increase in the rate at which something happens or develops” and that the man whose face is on the cover is probably accelerating and/or increasing in something.)

Bibliography:
McNamee, G (2003). Acceleration. New York, NY: Dell Laurel-Leaf.