I love the Newsies unit. It is not the great songs that get stuck in my head.It is not that the main character in the movie is Christian Bale (Batman). It is not all the great dance moves in the movie. It is not the fact that kids worked together to change the world for the better, although that is inspirational and impressive. It is not even the feel good, fun movie. It is not that we actually read real newspaper articles about the newsboys from 1899 (which is pretty cool and took an amazing amount of work, New York phone calls and letters of request). It is not that we have a lot of fun in class acting out Newsies scenes from those newspaper articles even though that is pretty fun.
It is because 8th graders go into the Newsies unit like a caterpillar and come out like a butterfly. I could call it the cocoon unit. You crawl into the unit writing well and strong and feed. (Caterpillars eat a lot before they turn into butterflies according The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. 8th graders are figuratively feed because you are in writing shape and you have good organization and paragraph structure.) Any way in the Newsies unit you will get in a cocoon, work hard, learn a lot and BAM you will break free and your writing will be beautiful, strong and you can fly.
Newsies I can't wait,
Mr. Johnson
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