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Lesson Plans
Beyond the Story: A Dickens of a Party
In this ReadWriteThink lesson, middle school students are invited to a party celebrating Scrooge’s new outlook on life. Students assume the persona of a character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and then write and present a first-person character analysis.
Lights, Camera, Action: Interviewing a Book Character
This lesson for grades 6–8 is a good companion to the reading of a book like A Christmas Carol. Students conduct an extensive character examination, keep journal entries, meet for group discussions, and use an online graphic organizer.
Audio Broadcasts and Podcasts: Oral Storytelling and Dramatization
In this lesson, high school students explore another famous story broadcast over the radio – H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. They then create a podcast of their own dramatic reading from a recently-read book.
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Web Links
Dickens
This online resource from PBS provides information about the life and career of Dickens, a quiz to test your knowledge, and other related Web resources.
Discovering Dickens: A Community Reading Project
Since 2003, Stanford University has encouraged community reading and discussion of Dickens’ novels through the serial release of his major works. Biographical and historical context information is included with each serial publication.
The Dickens Page
This webpage includes hundreds of links to primary and secondary documents on various aspects of Dickens’ life and work.
Charles Dickens
This page from the Victorian Web provides extensive links to Dickens’ biography, chronology, a list of works, an introduction, and other relevant essays.
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Texts
Dickens, Charles. 1997. A Christmas Carol. DK Publishing, Inc.
This abridgement of the classic story is targeted for upper primary and intermediate students.
Smiley, Jane. 2002. Charles Dickens. Viking Press.
Part of the Penguin Lives series, this excellent biography of Dickens can easily be used in an intermediate English or Social Studies class.
Caravantes, Peggy. 2005. Best of Times: The Story of Charles Dickens. Morgan Reynolds Publishing.
This biography of Dickens for the upper grades focuses on early influences that affected his writing. Images and quotes enhance the text.
Williams, Marcia. 2002. Charles Dickens and Friends. Candlewick Press.
This wonderful picture book offers short, comic-book style retellings of A Christmas Carol and four other classic Dickens titles.
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December 25, 2009
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a “potboiler,” or an inferior work done purely for quick profit. Unfortunately, while the book was an instant success and remains one of his best-known works, Dickens made little profit because people purchased pirated editions. There were no copyright laws at that time in England.
