Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase written by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase
Jonathan Stroud
720L

            This book is about a paranormal detective agency run without adults, in this world only children can see supernatural beings and have the scientific equipment to handle them for the adults. The story is told by Lucy Carlyle and how she joins up with the Lockwood & Company agency on a job to clean up a house that has 50 years of hauntings/possible murders.

2014 Edgar Award Nominee;
2013 Cybils Awards, Speculative Fiction: Elementary and Middle Grade, Winner;
L A. Times Book Prize Finalist 2013, Young Adult Literature;
VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers 2013, Top of the Top Shelf

Learning Activity:
The students will read Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase and select different hauntings/scary setting elements and write about how the characters in the story react to those events over the course of the story. The student will look at different scenes, focusing on how Lucy describes the setting and how her, Anthony, George, or any of the other Lockwood team change over time to the scary look of things. The student will give their own opinion on why they think the character changed like this.

Standards:
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.6.1 - Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.6.3 - Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.

Goal:
The students will read the text and write two or three paragraphs on how a character or characters develop over time to an anxiety provoking aspect of the plot (scary haunting scene).

Objective:
Cognitive -
            The student will write two or three paragraphs about how a character develops over the story using a certain plot aspect as a point of reference for those changes.
            The student will explain their reasoning for these character changes throughout the story.

Outcome:
The student will look over the whole of the text and note how and why they think a character changes or develops based on events in the story.