Middle School Students Showcase Portrait Gallery Based On First-Person Novels

Middle School students immersed in interactive reading strategies during a unit in English teacher Christie McMahon’s grade 7 English class. The unit, called “Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Doors,” is based on a first-person novel that students choose from a provided list. Each book offers complex, dynamic young protagonists with challenges that are both relatable and world-expanding. 

Mrs. McMahon explains the value of this interactive exercise: “Through their novels, students get a peek into other ways of living, see themselves reflected in their books, and perhaps even, step into a new way of understanding the world and their own identities in it.”

Students worked in groups to prepare a “portrait” of their protagonist created in teams of two and three. In this “portrait,” students represented important characteristics about their protagonist, both visually and in writing. Forty of these portraits were posted in the arched hallway outside the Darcy Rice Center for the Arts facing the Middle School courtyard where students walked through the “portrait gallery” and interacted with each of the posters, “interviewing” the characters.