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The Giver
by Lois Lowry
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Create your Reading Response
Journal Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Key Vocabulary (10 pages)

Part 2: Reading Check and Interpretive Questions (15 pages)

Part 3: Personal Response Questions (5 pages)

Part 4: Literary Devices and Quick-writes (5 pages)
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Part 5: Handouts
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The Giver Vocabulary Words
For each section, complete the following
assignments for vocabulary:
 As
you read, highlight the vocabulary words in your text
(or use post-its).
 Record
the vocabulary in your Reading Journal Cornell
notes style with the appropriate heading.
 Include
the page number where you found the word.
 Guess
what you think the word means using context
clues from the book.
 Record
the definition that the teacher gives you.
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The Giver Reading Check &
Interpretive Questions

Glue these papers into your journal.
 Directions:
For each section, answer the
following questions in complete and
detailed sentences in your reading journal.
Skip lines between questions. Remember
to re-phrase the question in your answer.
Use capitals and periods. Use examples
from the story to support your answer when
necessary.
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Personal Response Questions
 Directions:
For each section, choose one
question to answer in paragraph form in
your Reading Journal. Remember to
rewrite the question as your topic sentence.
Your paragraph should be 5 - 8 detailed and
complete sentences. Remember to use
capitals and periods. Include the following
heading, “Personal Response, Section ___”
on the top of your paper.
Warm Up Quickwrite: Answer in your
notebook (PART 4). Write in complete
sentences. Don’t forget your topic
sentence!
What would it take to make your world
perfect?
What would you be willing to give up to
have your world perfect?
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Anticipation Guide for
The Giver by Lois Lowry
If you agree with the statement, please stand.
1.
An ideal community would not have any hunger or starvation.
2.
An ideal community would not have any jealousy or competition.
3.
An ideal community would not have any unemployment.
4.
All children should have equal possessions and privileges at a
certain age, regardless of the status of their families.
5.
Families are much closer when they share their feelings.
con’t next slide
+ 6. Life would be better and easier if we did not
carry bad memories in our heads.
7. Overpopulation is such a problem that families
should not be allowed to have more than two
children.
8.
There is no real need to learn about world
history.
9.
There is no real need to learn about one’s own
family history.
10.
One’s job or occupation in life should be a
careful match to one’s interests, talents, and
skills.
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Meet the Author

Lois Lowry was born on
March 20, 1937 in Honolulu,
Hawaii, to Katharine, a
teacher, and Robert
Hammersberg, an army
dentist stationed near Pearl
Harbor. Lois, her siblings,
and her mother moved to
Pennsylvania before the
Pearl Harbor bombings in
1941. By her own account,
Lowry's childhood was safe,
happy, and predictable. Her
father was deployed for
several years, so Lowry
grew up largely without his
presence.
L o i s L o w r y
Lowry learned to read at an early age, and she loved to create
stories in her mind as a child. She graduated from high school
at sixteen and matriculated at Pembroke College, a women’s
college that was connected to and later became part of Brown
University. She studied writing with the hope of becoming a
novelist. However, like many of her female peers in the 1950s,
Lowry married before completing college and turned her
attention to being a homemaker. She married naval officer
Donald Grey Lowry in 1956 and spent the next several years
raising their four children: Alix, Grey, Kristin, and Benjamin.
Donald pursued his law degree at Harvard, while Lois stayed
at home with the children until they reached adulthood.
Eventually, she returned to school to complete her degree at
the University of Southern Maine in 1972. She continued on to
attend graduate school at USM.
Lowry received the Newbery Medal for Children's
Literature twice in her career. She earned the first one
in 1990 for Number the Stars. She received her second
Newbery Medal in 1993 for The Giver. Lois Lowry
published more several novels during the 2000s,
including Gathering Blue and Messenger, both of which
are set in the same environment as The Giver. One of
America's most celebrated young adult novelists, Lois
Lowry has engaged millions of readers with her careful
and sensitive stories dealing with major issues like
death, cancer, and the Holocaust. She remains an active
writer.
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About the Novel
The Giver was inspired in part by
Lowry’s relationship with her father
who was, at that time, in a nursing
home having lost most of his longterm memory. She realized one day
while visiting her father that, without
memory, there is no pain, and began
to imagine a society in which the past
was deliberately forgotten. The flaws
in that supposedly ideal society show
the need for personal and societal
memory and for making connections
with the past and with each other.
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Create a T-chart to record your
notes on each type of society
Details about
UTOPIAN
SOCIETY
DETAILS
ABOUT
DYSTOPIAN
SOCIETY
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Welcome to
UTOPIA
Utopia is a perfect place where
people can lead perfect lives.
The Giver takes place in such
an ideal community.
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Euphemism (Create a page for this
term in your journal)
A
euphemism is a word or term that has mild or
vague connotations and that serve to mask the
offensiveness or harshness of the actual word or
term. What euphemisms are used in our society?

Example: A used car being called “certified preowned”

Think of two other examples of your own.
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Denotations and Connotations
(make a page in your journal with this title)

The connotations of a word are the suggestions
and associations that go along with the word,
stretchingbeyond its dictionary meaning. Notice
the first sentence of the novel.
“It was almost December and Jonas was beginning
to be frightened.”
The word December is rich in connotations: cold,
darkness, the death that comes to plants in
winter.The opposite of connotation is
DENOTATION, or the dictionary definition of a
word. Every word has both a denotation and a
connotation.
+ Tone and Mood
(Make a page in your journal with this title)
 Tone
is the author’s attitude toward the writing (his
characters, the situation) and the readers. A work of
writing can have more than one tone. An example of
tone could be both serious and humorous. Tone is
set by the setting, choice of vocabulary and other
details.
 Mood
is the general atmosphere created by the
author’s words. It is the feeling the reader gets from
reading those words. It may be the same, or it may
change from situation to situation.
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Words that describe Mood

Fanciful
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Melancholy
 Frightening
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Mysterious
Sentimental
Happy
Sorrowful
Joyful
 Frustrating
Suspenseful
 Romantic
Gloomy
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Let’s read the first nine paragraphs of chapter one of
The Giver. Pay attention to the author’s tone and the
mood of the writing.
After reading:
 What
is the hook the author uses to get your
interest?
 What
 How
is the author’s tone?
does the story make you feel? (mood)