The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

This unit on The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is designed to focus on holistic critical reading skills. The activities focus on developing…

• a solid knowledge and understanding of the work.
• an interpretation of the ideas and issues raised throughout the work.
• an appreciation for the broader authorial choices made in the work.
• an appreciation for the work’s intertextuality.
• a personal response and evaluation of choices made in the work.

The resources in this unit include:

• A chapter by chapter activity portfolio
• A knowledge and understanding objective assessment for Parts 1 and 2 of the novel with answer key
• An oral essay assessment

Teaching Resources (PDF)

Teaching Resources (Word)

A Note about the Resources

Activity Portfolio
Many of the activities are designed to be used in conjunction with collaborative protocols that can be found under the “Teaching Approaches” page. These protocols are not dictated on the activities so that teachers can choose protocols that best fit their needs.

There is an effort throughout the activities to draw students’ attention to broader authorial choices. For most activities or questions, the literary feature the student is being asked to analyze or evaluate is in bold above the question or set of questions that follow.

For copyright purposes, full passages have not been included in the activities. Teachers can easily copy/paste the passages from the Kindle version of the work; chapter and page numbers are provided.

Knowledge and Understanding Assessment
This assessment is designed to hold students accountable for details in the work that might hold significant meaning. Each detail was chosen for its potential to be used as evidence in supporting inferences and developing interpretations of the work. While the assessment is more traditional, there are multiple benefits to this type of assessment that help students know the work well, which ultimately helps them on more complex summative assessments that ask them to analyze and evaluate the work.

Oral Essay
This assessment was originally designed to help students prepare for the IB English A Individual Oral Exam, encouraging students to focus on the work as a whole (as opposed to getting fixated on a particular passage). The global issues cited in the assessment specifically refer to components of the IB English A course, but these could easily be changed or removed to fit a different program.

The questions are scaffolded to ensure that students fully unpack all of the demands of the question to be successful on the assessment rubric. This is a good opportunity to discuss and practice the “unpacking” of questions so that students can independently learn this skill in preparation for the written essay exam.

Novel Review

Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead