I recently started teaching the novel Speak with my honors students. We are focusing a lot this year on finding textual evidence to support ideas and claims. But honestly, it can get a little tedious to simply ask my students to look up quote after quote after quote. So, I decided to get a little creative with finding textual evidence and address a serious issue brought up by the novel at the same time!
The main character in the novel, Melinda, is suffering from depression. The author makes the conscious choice to characterize her with different signs and symptoms of depression. I decided to make my students "doctors" for the day and have them prove to me that she could indeed be diagnosed with depression.
I found a website that listed the signs and symptoms, listed them and made a sheet for my students to write their "observations" of Melinda. They had to find a quote to correspond with all the symptoms. They did a great job! We found textual evidence of all of the signs and symptoms of depression.
This activity lead us into a discussion about teen depression where we looked at facts and stats about depression in teens. We talked about who to speak with if you think you need help, and what kinds of things you can do to treat depression. Find the worksheet here and a link to a site with information about teen depression below.
I hope this lesson is helpful and enjoyable!
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_teen.htm
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