Symbolism Lesson

My supervisor came and observed me during a reading lesson I taught a few days ago.  I was a little nervous because she was observing my rowdy class, but the lesson went great.  It focused on symbolism in The Giver.  Whenever I create my own lessons,  there is always some kind of anticipatory activity, related to the lesson, implemented at the very beginning of class to capture students' attention.  Well, at the beginning of class, I showed the hilarious clip located above.  The students loved this clip!  Some asked me to play it again—which I didn’t, but I definitely had their attention :).  After this I gave a quick overview of symbols and asked students to tell me what money, the American flag, and the color yellow symbolize.  Then I explained they would be working in groups to identify and determine the meaning of a symbol from a passage in The Giver.  Each student in the group was given a specific task.  One student had to read aloud their passage.  One student had to write down what their symbol was and what it represented.  One student had to go over to a pile of photos I had printed out and find a picture of their symbol.  Another student taped the picture of the symbol to the board and wrote what the symbol was and what it represented.  The last student came up and presented his or her group’s findings to the class.  Overall, it went well, and the intervention specialist asked for the clip I used at the beginning of class!