Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This unit on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is designed to focus on developing an understanding of narrative elements and on empowering students to write a convincing literary argument. The activities focus on developing…
- a solid knowledge and understanding of the work
- an appreciation of how the essential elements of narrative fiction work in tandem to create meaning and feeling
- a student’s confidence in generating ideas about a novel and using evidence to support those ideas
The resources in this unit include:
- Activities centered around central literary elements (structure, setting, point of view, characterization, conflict)
- A description of a recurring generative writing task (“Paper Starters”) with student examples and teacher feedback
- A scaffolded essay writing process with 4 distinct prompts
- Student examples of introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions
Teaching Resources (PDF)
Teaching Resources (Word)
A Note about the Resources
Activities
The passages in the “Never Let Me Go Activities” include the first and last lines of the passage, the chapter, and the page numbers from the edition from which they were extracted. For copyright reasons, the bulk of the passage has been removed.
Essay Assessment
For the essay assessment, a rubric is not included in the materials. A rubric that assesses more holistic understanding, interpretation, and appreciation of a literary work such as for the IB HL Essay, the IB Paper 2, or the AP FRQ 3 is suggested but note that the first two would need to be adapted to account for the fact that it is a single-text task.
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