Literature Lesson Plan 1
Demonstrating a Foilii
Level: Secondary
Overview
Objective
Standards
Teachers will give the materials and appropriate time for students to learn about
and make foils of themselves. They will compare these foils to examples in
literature as well.
Students will be able to understand the concept of a foil and demonstrate the
capacity to find foils in literature.
This lesson completes the English/Language Arts 9th grade standard of:
READING: Comprehension and Analysis of Nonfiction and Informational Text
9.2
Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material. The
selections in the www.doe.in.gov/standards/readinglist.html illustrate the
quality and complexity of the materials to be read by students. At Grade 9,
in addition to regular classroom reading, students read a wide variety of
nonfiction, such as biographies, autobiographies, books in many different
subject areas, essays, speeches, magazines, newspapers, reference
materials, technical documents, and online information.
Materials
Procedure
Aluminum foil, construction paper, scissors, glue, crayons or markers, the novel
Huckleberry Finn.
Teacher will:
1. Firstly show students part of a lecture from Youtube EDU that describes the
works of Mark Twain such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. This can
provide a brief encounter with a more in-depth analysis of the time period
and the literature of the time.
2. Give students the appropriate materials
Literature Lesson Plan 1
3. Have students fold a sheet of notebook paper in half. On the right side they
list several characteristics that describe themselves.
4. Then they write the opposite of each of those characteristics on the other half
of the paper.
5. Explain to the students that the left side of the paper describes someone who
is their "foil”, i.e. a person with opposing characteristics who highlights
certain features of another character.
6. Give an example found in Huckleberry Finn to illustrate the point. Tom Sawyer
foils Huckleberry Finn in the way that Tom is always looking for excitement
and is not necessarily the most moral at times, where as Huck has good
intentions and is more straight-forward in his approach to life.
7. Before students get started, show students an example of the “foil” person
they are to create. It should be a foil of yourself so they are able to make the
connection easier.
8. Students use aluminum foil to create a person, and they decorate that
aluminum foil character to represent their foil. They may choose to represent
several characteristics or just one.
Evaluation
Have students get into groups. To further demonstrate their understanding, each
group should find an actual example in the novel Huckleberry Finn that illustrates
the differences between Huck and Tom.
Allow each group to quickly present their example as they hold up their foils for
the class to see as well.
i
http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pages/479.shtml
ii
http://www.globalgallery.com/prod_images/600/79459.jpg