This class is not being offered by Mrs. Leslie this year.
Overall Essential Question- Why is it human to search for understanding?
Quarter One
Tangerine by Edward Bloor
Essential Question- How have humans come to understand their origins?
Welcome to Tangerine. This place is weirder then it looks. Paul Fisher sees the world from behind glasses so thick he looks like a bug-eyed alien. But then he's not so blind that he can't see there are some very unusual things about his family's new home in Tangerine County, Florida. Where else does a sinkhole swallow the local school, fire burn underground for years, and lightening strike at the same time every day?
With all this chaos compounded by constant harassment from his football-star brother, adjusting to his life in Tangerine isn't easy for Paul---until he joins the soccer team at his middle school. With the help of his new team-mates, Paul discovers what lies beneath the surface of his strange new home-town. And he also gains the courage to face up to some secrets his family has been keeping from him for far too long.
In Tangerine, it seems, anything is possible.
Quarter Two
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Essential Questions- What are the roles of systems in human understanding?
A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over thirty years, Richard Adams's Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.
Quarters Three and Four
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Essential Question- How are humans impacted by conflict, and how do they continuously seek resolution?
A page-turning novel as well as an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie's World--with more than thirty million copies in print--has fired the imaginations of readers all over the world. One day fourteen year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, each with a question: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From this irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through successive letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while also receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning--but the truth turns out to be far more complicated then she could have ever imagined.