Raven, Rising
by Christine Hartman Derr
After losing her parents, Raven, a young Cherokee girl, moves to a new town and faces bullying, complicated social relationships, and grief. When she discovers mysterious magic, she must consider how to confront injustice and build a better future.
Big Idea
Finding belonging does not require accepting injustice or facing hardship alone. Raven’s story invites students to explore how grief, identity, choices, and support can shape a person’s growing sense of agency.
Discussion Questions
- 1.How might Raven’s grief affect the way she experiences her new town and responds to other people? What evidence supports your interpretation?
- 2.What makes a place feel welcoming or unwelcoming to Raven? Which characters have opportunities to change that atmosphere?
- 3.How does the possibility of using magic complicate Raven’s choices about responding to bullying and injustice?
- 4.Where do you see Raven’s identity influencing her experiences or decisions? Distinguish what the text tells us from assumptions readers might make.
- 5.What might a better future mean to Raven beyond stopping a bully? What kinds of help, relationships, or changes could make that future possible?
Lesson Plan
Learning Goals
- Use textual evidence to explain how Raven responds to grief, exclusion, or injustice.
- Distinguish scene from summary and explain how each affects narrative pace.
- Revise a short narrative by expanding a significant moment and compressing less important information.
- Develop a character’s response through actions, thoughts, dialogue, and supportive relationships.
- Discuss identity respectfully while distinguishing textual evidence from cultural assumptions.
Activity Steps
- 1.Prepare and read aloud a short, verified passage in which Raven encounters exclusion, considers a response, or experiences a change connected to the mysterious magic. Establish that students may discuss fictional situations without disclosing personal losses or bullying experiences.
- 2.Identify what happens, what Raven may want, and what the passage explicitly reveals about her response. Mark places where the narration slows into a scene or moves quickly through summary.
- 3.Fold a sheet into six accordion panels labeled Background, Disruption, Reaction, Choice, Support, and Next Step. Map the selected passage using brief notes and page references; label any proposed continuation as an inference rather than a book event.
- 4.Write a 150–250-word original scene about a fictional newcomer confronting an unfair situation. Compress the background into one sentence, expand the moment of choice with three specific details, and include a credible source of support; students may dictate or use a shorter target as needed.
- 5.Exchange drafts and mark one place that feels fast and one that feels slow. Revise to make the most important moment stand out, then complete an exit ticket explaining one pacing decision and how it affects the reader.
Standards Connections
- ELA: CCSS RL.3.3–RL.5.3—Describe and analyze characters, their responses, and their interactions; RL.6.3–RL.7.3—Analyze how story elements develop and interact.
- ELA: CCSS W.3.3–W.7.3—Develop narratives using effective technique, descriptive details, and coherent event sequences; expectations become more complex across grades.
- ELA: CCSS W.3.5–W.7.5—Strengthen writing through planning, feedback, revision, and editing with grade-appropriate support.
- ELA: CCSS SL.3.1–SL.7.1—Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and supporting interpretations.
- SEL: Self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making—Explore emotions, belonging, supportive responses, and choices in unfair situations.
Printable Teacher’s Guide
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Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!
Raven, Rising offers a useful framework for exploring how a narrative balances inward experience with outward action. Raven’s grief and adjustment to a new town invite attention to emotional time, while bullying, injustice, and mysterious magic create opportunities to examine urgency and consequential choices. A pacing study asks students not simply whether events happen quickly, but which moments deserve the reader’s sustained attention. This guide is based on the supplied synopsis, not a verified full text. Before teaching, select passages from your edition and check which techniques actually appear; the prompts below are investigative lenses, not claims that the novel contains every device. Compare the space given to Raven’s thoughts, social encounters, and discoveries, then ask students how sentence structure, scene length, and withheld information shape their reading experience. Use a read-notice-write-reread cycle: study a short passage, name one craft decision, try that decision in an original scene, and read the revision aloud. Keep cultural interpretation grounded in the text and reliable Cherokee-authored resources, rather than treating a fantasy element as evidence of Cherokee belief. Offer fictional writing options throughout, so students can explore difficult themes without being asked to disclose personal grief or experiences of bullying.
| Element | How to notice or teach it in the novel |
|---|---|
| Pacing | Compare a passage centered on Raven’s feelings with one centered on an immediate conflict or discovery. Track how much reading space each event receives and discuss why emotional importance may slow the telling. |
| Plot | Map how Raven’s move, social difficulties, and discovery of magic create new problems and choices. Distinguish events that merely follow one another from events connected by cause and effect. |
| Prosody | Read a selected passage aloud twice, varying stress, phrasing, and pauses. Ask which reading best fits Raven’s situation and which textual cues support that performance. |
| Word | Collect words the author uses around Raven’s grief, belonging, or magic. Test how replacing one precise word with a general word changes the emotional force or speed of a sentence. |
| Concept | Frame the central tension as a question: How can someone seek belonging while resisting injustice? Examine how the fantasy premise lets readers explore that question through Raven’s choices. |
| Voice & Worldview | Notice which experiences the narration emphasizes and how unfair behavior is presented. Ground interpretations of Raven’s outlook in her particular characterization rather than assuming she represents all Cherokee people. |
| Point of View | Identify the novel’s actual narrator and the limits of that narrator’s knowledge. Discuss how access to—or distance from—Raven’s thoughts influences sympathy, uncertainty, and pace. |
| Setting & Place | Find details that make Raven’s new town feel familiar, strange, safe, or unwelcoming. Ask how entering an unfamiliar place changes what she and the reader must notice. |
| Original Characters | Build a portrait of Raven using specific wants, actions, contradictions, and relationships. For an original character, students should borrow a craft technique rather than copy Raven’s identity or reduce her to grief or magical ability. |
| Dialogue | If the selected passage includes dialogue, examine how speech, silence, and interruptions reveal the social dynamics Raven faces. Compare a spoken exchange with a summary of the same exchange. |
| Details | Identify small details that help readers understand Raven’s situation without a lengthy explanation. Ask which detail most changes the reader’s interpretation and why. |
| Descriptions | Study how a verified descriptive passage directs attention toward place, emotion, or the unfamiliar. Have students shorten and expand an original description to compare its effect on pace. |
| Firsts | Locate the first presentation of Raven’s new surroundings, a significant relationship, or the mysterious magic. Discuss what the author explains immediately and what remains unknown. |
| Immediacy & Engagement | Find a moment that makes Raven’s problem feel present rather than distant. Identify whether action, sensory detail, a question, or a sharply defined desire creates that effect. |
| Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures | Mark a scene that unfolds moment by moment and a summary that covers more time briefly. Discuss why the author might expand a difficult encounter while compressing a transition. |
| Tension / Suspense / Surprise | Separate concern about Raven’s well-being from curiosity about what the magic can do. Track how the text creates, sustains, or resolves these different kinds of uncertainty. |
| Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger | Check whether the novel uses any of these devices rather than presuming it does. If a passage recalls Raven’s parents or ends with unresolved danger, explain how its placement changes the present scene. |
| Page Turns and Chapter Breaks | Examine actual chapter endings for a question, revelation, emotional shift, or unfinished action. Distinguish an intentional chapter break from a page turn caused by a particular edition’s layout. |
| Pace & Creativity | Rewrite an original moment inspired by Raven’s dilemma once in three sentences and once in a full paragraph. Compare which version better emphasizes uncertainty, emotion, or decisive action. |
| Play | Use movable sentence strips to rearrange an original scene about a newcomer facing exclusion. Test how beginning with a reaction instead of background changes the reader’s experience. |
| Performance | Use a brief, teacher-selected passage for a supported read-aloud that explores pacing without reenacting harassment. Offer narrator, timing, or annotation roles so performance is optional. |
| Personality | Notice how Raven’s particular reactions distinguish her from a generic fantasy protagonist. Ask how her personality influences whether a moment becomes reflective, confrontational, hesitant, or decisive. |
| Humor | If humor appears, investigate whether it builds connection, offers relief, or harms someone. If it does not appear in the passage, discuss why adding a joke could undermine a moment of grief or injustice. |
| Pause | Locate a silence, reflective sentence, or break in action surrounding a difficult experience. Ask what readers can understand during that pause that they might miss in a faster telling. |
| Poetry / Poetic Devices | Look for verified examples of imagery, metaphor, simile, or sound patterning in passages about Raven’s emotions or magic. Explain what each example contributes rather than assuming the prose is consistently lyrical. |
| Repetition | Track any recurring word, image, or concern connected to loss, belonging, or power. Discuss whether its meaning changes as Raven’s circumstances change. |
| Rhythm | Compare sentence-length patterns in two contrasting passages. Read them aloud to test whether the rhythm creates hesitation, momentum, reflection, or another effect. |
| Punctuation | Examine how the punctuation in a chosen passage groups thoughts and guides pauses. In students’ original drafts, compare a sequence of short sentences with a longer sentence linking the same actions. |
| Questions | Maintain a reader-question chart about Raven’s choices, relationships, and the nature of the magic. Record when a question is answered and whether that answer creates a new uncertainty. |
| Compare-Contrast | Compare Raven’s responses in two verified situations involving uncertainty or unfairness. Use changes in action, thought, and narrative space to discuss development without assuming grief follows a simple progression. |
| Objects | If a physical object receives repeated or sustained attention, trace its practical and emotional roles. Do not assign cultural significance to an object unless the text or a reliable contextual source supports that interpretation. |
| Threes | Look for any three-part pattern in phrasing, actions, or encounters, and test its effect. If none is evident, students can try three accumulating details in an original scene and label this as their own experiment. |
| Lists | If the text uses a list, examine whether it suggests overwhelm, abundance, urgency, or careful observation. Students can compare listing a newcomer’s worries with developing just one worry into a scene. |
| White Space & Negative Space | Inspect paragraphing and section breaks in the actual edition for places where visual space invites a pause. Separately discuss what the narration leaves unstated, distinguishing textual inference from unsupported invention. |
| Art & Graphics | If the edition includes illustrations or graphic features, analyze how they frame expectations about Raven and the fantasy story. If not, students can create a pacing storyboard and identify it as their interpretation, not original book art. |
| Interactives & Gamification | Create a classroom sequencing challenge using verified plot events, then justify each placement with evidence. Keep the challenge focused on narrative structure rather than awarding points for Raven’s suffering or treating bullying as entertainment. |
| Placement | Examine when readers learn a crucial fact about Raven’s circumstances or the magic. Discuss how moving that information earlier or later would affect understanding and suspense. |
| Form | Identify the forms actually present, such as narration, dialogue, or any embedded text. Transform a brief original scene into a fictional journal entry and discuss how the change alters immediacy and access to thought. |
| Dummy | Make a six-panel paper dummy—a miniature planning booklet—for an original scene inspired by the novel’s themes. Give the turning point more space than the background, then test the sequence by turning its pages. |
| Passion | Ask which concern in Raven’s story—belonging, loss, fairness, or agency—most engages each reader and why. Students can use that concern to guide an original scene while recognizing that emotional investment does not require personal disclosure. |
Pace-Write It!
20-minute Pace-Write-Read task: One Choice, Two Speeds. Minutes 0–4: Read a short, verified passage in which Raven faces an unfair situation or considers what the mysterious magic might make possible. Identify the immediate problem, what the text reveals about her response, and one place the telling slows down. Minutes 4–6: Model the difference between summarizing an event and expanding its decisive moment; use an invented newcomer rather than adding unverified events to Raven’s story. Minutes 6–12: Students write a 100–150-word original scene about a fictional newcomer deciding how to respond to exclusion. Require one sentence of background, three details that slow the moment of choice, and an action that seeks support or challenges unfairness safely; allow dictation or a shorter draft. Students should not invent Cherokee beliefs or assume that the book’s magic represents Cherokee traditions. Minutes 12–16: Partners read aloud or silently, marking where the scene feels fastest and slowest. Minutes 16–19: Writers cut one unnecessary explanation and expand one meaningful action, thought, or pause. Minute 19–20: Exit ticket: 'I slowed down ___ so the reader would notice ___.'
Classroom Activities
Raven’s Turning-Point Accordion
Students fold paper into an accordion that maps a verified turning point in Raven’s story, then write an original companion scene in which a fictional newcomer faces an unfair situation. By expanding a crucial moment and compressing background information, students explore how pacing can emphasize emotion, choice, and support. Students need not share personal experiences of grief or bullying; the writing should not invent Cherokee ceremonies, beliefs, or language or assume that Raven’s magic represents Cherokee traditions.
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