The Hobbit: A Unit Plan

Rating:
Summary: Generic Lesson Plans
Review: Although the Book Description is accurate, I'm a little disappointed in the quality of the activities and lessons included on the CD. I teach 9th grade English and was looking for materials to supplement my own knowledge of The Hobbit and other materials I had already found on-line.

Many of the lessons are simply, "Discuss the answers to the chapter 4 study guide questions. If there is time left at the end of class, have students begin reading chapter 5 quietly." The study guide questions are equally simple with lists of characters and instructions like, "Describe these characters." Even the crosswords and games are of a quality on par with activities I have created myself using resources on existing websites.

What these lesson plans most lack are insights on the deeper meanings within the novel. For example, there is little reference to Bilbo's heroism in comparison to the heroism of other mythological heroes. There is little background information about Tolkien and his motivations for writing the novel.

Overall, I would not recommend these lesson plans. There is a wealth of information about Tolkien and The Hobbit that is available on-line. With a some time and energy a much better unit plan could be developed with little effort.

I suppose if you didn't have time to create even the simplest test, quiz, or study guide, these lesson plans would suffice.

Rating:
Summary: Good basis for Hobbit Unit
Review: This unit plan comes on a CD and is one large PDF file. It has vocabulary lessons, study guides, quizzes, lesson plans, and extra materials, such as crosswords and word searches. The level of the material seems to be about right for my regular ed 7th graders, although it would be nice to have some more complex material as well. My students don't need it, but honors and gifted students could benefit from it. If you are teaching those classes, I would recommend The Hobbit: A Teaching Guide by Kathy Kifer, in addition to this CD.

The major reason I gave this CD 4 stars is that I don't have Adobe Acrobat and transferring the material to a word processor is tedious. I need to edit some of the pages to make them easier to photocopy and use as student handouts. This would be much easier with Adobe Acrobat.

Two minor quibbles: It is Gloin, not Golin and Durin's Day is the dwarves' new year, not the elves'. My students caught the latter error and I was actually rather proud of them for reading that carefully.

All in all, though I do recommend this CD. It has made teaching this book MUCH easier for me.