I love when you see how a book can be educational as soon as you start to read it. It’s much, much better when that book is also loads of fun to read, and that’s exactly how I felt after turning the first page of Gordan Korman’s Slacker.
Cameron Boxer is very happy to spend his life avoiding homework, hanging out with his friends, and gaming for hours in his basement. It’s not too hard for him to get away with it . . . until he gets so caught up in one game that he almost lets his house burn down around him.
Oops.
It’s time for some serious damage control — so Cameron and his friends invent a fake school club that will make it seem like they’re doing good deeds instead of slacking off. The problem? Some kids think the club is real — and Cameron is stuck being president.
Soon Cameron is part of a mission to save a beaver named Elvis from certain extinction. Along the way, he makes some new friends — and some powerful new enemies. The guy who never cared about anything is now at the center of everything . . . and it’s going to take all his slacker skills to win this round.
Slacker is great because there are so many lessons to be learned – but you’ll be rolling with laughter while you do. I created this packet full of opinion- and culture-based discussion questions and writing projects to maximize learning while laughing. The discussion questions are open-ended, sorted by chapter, and are based on events from the book. Several of the writing projects are similar: they’re designed for your student to make a statement and then back it up with logic.
Other writing projects are different, though. They require students to create newspaper or journal articles based on their predictions about what might happen in the future, or to fill in character perspectives along the way.
I think your students will enjoy Slacker. Give it a read!
You can find Discussion Questions & Creative Writing Projects for Gordon Korman’s Slacker and much more in my TpT store.
