This Is the Year

by Gloria Muñoz

Gloria Muñoz’s This Is the Year follows a young protagonist navigating personal growth and the challenges of moving toward a different future. The supplied synopsis does not identify characters, major events, or narrative form; this guide therefore uses text-dependent investigations rather than inventing plot details, and the supplied 2026 ILA award attribution should be verified before publication.

Big Idea

Personal growth involves a changing understanding of oneself and one’s possibilities. Readers can investigate how a writer’s choices about narrative time, language, and emphasis make that change feel gradual, sudden, or uncertain.

Discussion Questions

1.At the beginning of This Is the Year, what does the protagonist appear to want, and what passages complicate that first impression?
2.Which encounter or decision most changes the protagonist’s understanding of themself? What evidence makes it a turning point rather than simply another event?
3.Where does Muñoz slow down an experience that could have been summarized quickly? How does that extra attention shape your understanding of the protagonist?
4.How do the people and circumstances around the protagonist support, challenge, or limit personal growth? Consider more than one interpretation.
5.How does the title This Is the Year influence your expectations? By the end, does it suggest a promise, a deadline, a hope, or something else?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes; assumes students have already read the selected passage.📦 Copies of This Is the Year, paper or notebooks, pencils, highlighters, sticky notes, and a timer; optional shared digital documents.

Learning Goals

Support an interpretation of the protagonist’s development with at least two relevant textual details.
Distinguish elapsed story time from the amount of space a writer gives an event.
Analyze how at least two craft choices influence pacing and reader attention.
Revise a passage deliberately to change its pace while preserving its central event.
Explain how a pacing revision changes the reader’s impression of a character’s decision.

Activity Steps

1.Launch and select — 5 minutes: Discuss the expectations created by the title This Is the Year. Have students select a previously read passage in which the protagonist faces a choice, recognizes something important, or responds to change.
2.Read and annotate — 8 minutes: Students reread the passage and mark textual signals that speed up, slow down, or interrupt the experience. Require attention to wording, syntax, and the balance between action and reflection.
3.Map narrative time — 7 minutes: On paper, students create a two-column chart labeled 'What happens and how much time passes' and 'How much attention the text gives it.' Add two brief quotations with page or location references.
4.Write two tempos — 12 minutes: Students adapt the selected event into a compressed version of approximately 60 words and an expanded version of approximately 120 words. Preserve the event and character circumstances; label any added sensory details as imaginative additions.
5.Partner read and revise — 8 minutes: Partners read both versions aloud, identify where their attention changes, and suggest one revision. Writers revise a sentence, line, or transition to strengthen the intended effect.
6.Reflect and assess — 5 minutes: Students submit both versions and a short explanation connecting their pacing choices to the protagonist’s development and to one specific choice in Muñoz’s original passage.

Standards Connections

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 / RL.11-12.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support literary analysis.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3 / RL.11-12.3: Analyze character development and the effects of an author’s choices about story elements.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5 / RL.11-12.5: Analyze how structural choices shape effects and meaning.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.B / W.11-12.3.B: Use narrative techniques, including pacing, description, dialogue, and reflection, to develop experiences and characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 / SL.11-12.1: Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing interpretations clearly.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

The title This Is the Year invites readers to think about time: what makes one period of life seem decisive, and how does a person recognize change while living through it? In this Pace-Write-Read study, students investigate those questions through the protagonist’s development. They track not only what happens, but also which experiences receive sustained attention and which move past quickly. Because the supplied synopsis is limited, the observations below are investigations to carry out with the book, not claims that every listed technique appears in it. Pacing is more than speed. A brief action can occupy substantial narrative space, while a long stretch of life can pass in a few sentences. Students examine an actual turning-point passage for the relationship between external events and internal response, then test the effects of compression and expansion in their own writing. Reading their revisions aloud makes that experiment audible: pauses, sentence lengths, and patterns of emphasis can change how a decision feels. Use a repeating cycle: notice a choice in Muñoz’s text, explain its effect with evidence, try a related technique, and reread to evaluate the result. Not every element below will be prominent or present. Recognizing an absence—and explaining why adding a feature would change the reading experience—is also a meaningful craft observation.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Choose a moment important to the protagonist’s growth and compare the time it would take to happen with the space Muñoz gives it. Identify the exact language or structural choices that make it feel quick, lingering, or interrupted.
2. Plot	Map a sequence of choices and consequences rather than simply listing events. Ask which consequence changes what the protagonist can do next and how quickly the narrative reaches it.
3. Prosody	Read a selected passage aloud, marking stress, pitch, and pauses suggested by its language. Compare two defensible readings and explain how each changes the emotional pace.
4. Word	Collect three words from a turning-point passage that influence urgency or hesitation. Substitute alternatives in a separate experiment and explain what changes in tone or speed.
5. Concept	Use the title’s idea of a consequential year as a starting hypothesis, then test it against the protagonist’s experiences. Ask whether growth appears to depend on a deadline, a realization, repeated choices, or another pattern supported by the text.
6. Voice & Worldview	Identify language that reveals how the narrative voice interprets change, uncertainty, or possibility. Distinguish the narrator’s outlook from the author’s beliefs rather than treating them as interchangeable.
7. Point of View	Establish the book’s actual point of view before discussing its effects. In a key scene, identify what readers know, what remains unavailable, and how that access controls anticipation.
8. Setting & Place	Locate a passage where the protagonist’s surroundings affect a choice or emotional response. Explain whether attention to place pauses the action or creates pressure that moves it forward.
9. Original Characters	Build an evidence-based portrait of the protagonist using a contradiction, a distinctive response, and a consequential choice. Discuss how those features make the growth arc more specific than a general story about maturing.
10. Dialogue	If the selected section contains dialogue, examine turn length, interruptions, and what speakers avoid saying. If it does not, discuss what readers gain from experiencing this moment without a spoken exchange.
11. Details	Identify one small detail that changes your interpretation of the protagonist’s response. Test whether removing it would merely shorten the passage or also weaken its meaning.
12. Descriptions	Compare description near a consequential event with description in a less pressured passage. Investigate how selection and length direct attention toward the protagonist’s changing concerns.
13. Firsts	Find an experience the text establishes as new for the protagonist; do not assume it is a first without evidence. Examine whether unfamiliarity leads to more observation, hesitation, or narrative attention.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Choose a moment that feels especially close or vivid and identify the textual features responsible. Consider whether engagement comes from action, emotional uncertainty, sensory information, or another demonstrable choice.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Mark where an event unfolds in detail and where the narrative condenses experience. Explain how the movement between those modes shapes the reader’s understanding of personal growth.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Before a consequential decision, write what remains uncertain and what the protagonist stands to gain or lose. After reading, distinguish anticipation from surprise and identify how information was managed.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Look for actual shifts in chronology or endings that leave a consequential question unresolved. Name only the devices present, and explain how each affects understanding of the protagonist’s current situation.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine a chapter or section ending in the classroom edition and the opening that follows it. Separate deliberate structural breaks from page turns that may differ across print and digital editions.
19. Pace & Creativity	Retell one verified event from the novel at two different speeds. Keep its circumstances constant so students can isolate how pacing, rather than a changed plot, produces a new effect.
20. Play	Use a low-stakes rearrangement exercise with students’ own sentences about the selected event. Compare playful experiments with Muñoz’s original choices without assuming the novel itself has a playful tone.
21. Performance	Perform the same short excerpt once with restrained pauses and once with longer reflective pauses. Use punctuation, syntax, and context to judge which performance better supports the passage.
22. Personality	Find a response that reveals the protagonist’s personality under pressure. Explain whether the text delivers that revelation through immediate action, sustained thought, or another character’s reaction.
23. Humor	If humor appears, examine whether it offers relief, creates distance, or reveals a relationship. If it is absent from the selected passage, discuss how adding humor might alter the seriousness of the protagonist’s experience.
24. Pause	Locate a pause created by reflection, silence, description, or a structural break. Ask what readers are invited to understand during that pause before events continue.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for demonstrable imagery, sound patterns, figurative language, or lineation in the actual text. Explain how a specific device concentrates attention without assuming that the book uses a particular narrative form.
26. Repetition	Track a repeated word, image, or situation if one emerges across your reading. Ask whether its meaning changes as the protagonist develops, rather than assuming repetition always means the same thing.
27. Rhythm	Mark patterns of longer and shorter language units in a selected passage. Read aloud to investigate whether the pattern supports acceleration, uncertainty, reflection, or contrast.
28. Punctuation	Study how the punctuation actually used in the passage organizes breath and emphasis. Repunctuate a sentence in a separate exercise, then explain how the original better supports—or differently frames—the moment.
29. Questions	Separate questions explicitly asked in the text from questions readers develop while reading. Track when one significant question about the protagonist receives an answer, a complication, or no resolution.
30. Compare-Contrast	Pair an earlier and later response to comparable pressures in the protagonist’s life. Compare both the responses and the narrative space devoted to them as evidence of change or continuity.
31. Objects	Select an object the text gives noticeable attention and trace its role without automatically labeling it a symbol. Ask whether its presence prompts memory, action, or reflection that affects the pace.
32. Threes	Check for a meaningful three-part pattern in language, choices, or events. If none is evident, try a three-part pattern in an original response and evaluate it as a student experiment, not an authorial feature.
33. Lists	If a list or accumulation appears, examine its order, length, and emotional effect. Otherwise, create a text-supported list of pressures on the protagonist and test how changing its order changes emphasis.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect the edition’s paragraph, section, and any line spacing to determine where visible breaks occur. Discuss their possible effects while avoiding unsupported claims that every blank area is an intentional narrative signal.
35. Art & Graphics	Inspect the book for illustrations, graphic features, or other visual material before analyzing their role. If none occurs in the narrative, students may create a clearly labeled visual interpretation of a turning point and explain what it adds or omits.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Do not assume the novel contains interactive features. As a classroom tool, let groups earn evidence tokens for explaining pacing choices accurately, prioritizing supported interpretations over fast answers.
37. Placement	Examine where an important realization appears within its scene or section. Ask how placing it earlier or later would change the reader’s understanding of the protagonist’s actions.
38. Form	Identify the book’s actual formal features from the text, including its narrative units and organization. Explain how those features distribute attention across the protagonist’s experiences.
39. Dummy	Create a six-panel paper mock-up of a selected scene, assigning one beat to each panel. Treat this dummy as a planning model—not as the novel’s original format—and vary panel space to show emphasis.
40. Passion	Identify what the protagonist values strongly enough to influence a consequential choice. Study where the narrative spends attention on that commitment, then use a personally meaningful but nonprivate subject for an original pacing experiment.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'The Year Changes Here.' Before class, select an actual passage from This Is the Year in which the protagonist makes a consequential choice or recognizes a change; record its chapter and page or location reference. Minutes 0–3: Students reread the passage and identify the choice or realization in one evidence-based sentence. Minutes 3–6: Annotate two pacing signals and note what the protagonist appears to value in this moment. Minutes 6–10: Write a 40–60-word compressed adaptation that preserves the event and its circumstances. Minutes 10–15: Write an 80–100-word expanded adaptation of the same event, slowing one brief moment through observation, thought, or carefully placed pauses; mark invented details and do not present them as Muñoz’s text. Minutes 15–18: Partners read the versions aloud and identify one place where tempo changes their understanding of the protagonist. Minutes 18–20: Submit an exit ticket: 'Muñoz gives attention to ___, which suggests ___. In my revision, I changed ___ to make the reader ___. This connects to the title because ___.' Assess for fidelity to the selected event, intentional pacing, and a supported connection to personal growth.

Classroom Activities

One Turning Point, Two Tempos

Students select a consequential decision from This Is the Year, map how Muñoz controls its pace, and create two short adaptations of the moment: one compressed and one expanded. By keeping the event constant while changing its presentation, students explore how pacing affects readers’ understanding of the protagonist’s growth. Passage selection must come from the classroom edition; students should not substitute invented events for textual evidence.

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