Remember, this week I would like you to write to us about an idea from Christensen's text that you are thinking about adopting and adapting for your critical unit of study. Remember that Christensen and Appleman share an appreciation for teaching critical perspectives--teaching students how to "de-code" the word and the world.
I look forward to reading about how you plan to incorporate concepts of social justice and critical lenses into your teaching idea. Hope you all had a good weekend.
When I was reading Teaching for Joy and Justice, I really enjoyed the part about "putting clothes on those ghost nouns and making them dance." I thought this was a clever and creative way to explain wanting to see fresh writing from students. Christensen's idea of taking lists of "I love..." statements was a great way to teach students how to use grammar and interesting verbs in context. I also thought the essay that she introduced to her students was a wonderful example of making their writing unique. When I have appointments with students writing the Career Commitment Essay, I emphasize that their essays should be unique to them and that their essays cannot represent anyone else. The same goes for letter-writing, which is part of my unit plan. I would take Christensen's idea of "I love..." statements and turn it into something that fits the criteria of a letter to a real person, like "I want..." or "I admire..." statements. I would also address concerns with grammar as they arise. It's more difficult to teach students about grammar without having their own writing in front of them to see how words and punctuation and other conventions work together. Making their letters unique is important for the students because they will have to write letters of intent for school projects (Senior Projects) and college applications, and even beyond high school, many professions require letter-writing. Giving the students the prompts "I love...", "I want...", or "I admire..." can help students brainstorm and to learn how to use grammar in a fresh way at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI really love Linda Christenson’s ideas about building a classroom community through poetry. Her ideas in the first few chapters reflect the goals of my unit plan perfectly. I would consider myself a failure if I did not create a safe community within my classroom where students are not afraid to share their personal experiences. I would love to borrow her idea of “Celebrating Their Homes” using a different poem such as; Warm by Kelly Norman Ellis. I would love to introduce this poem at the beginning of my unit to address poetry and related literary devices, of course by “coming in through the back door”, but also to begin addressing the idea of literary theory beginning with reader response. I would begin this lesson by reading the poem but not yet revealing the author. I would then have the students write down who they think the author is and why they think it. The students will then share out their opinions on the author. I will then reveal to them who the author is and have them write down catch phrases or words that they see differently knowing who the author is. This is a good way to begin a lesson about reader response pointing out the different ways that each student sees the same poem. I would then have them list things about the poem that they can relate to or is confusing to them. We would share them with the class so that they can begin to see the differences in each other’s point of view. I will then have them construct their own poem about what they see on their street as spring unfolds and it begins to warm up. I will encourage them to follow Ellis’s format so as not to over complicate the assignment but also to put their own spin on it and give it personal flavor. I will encourage them to “step out of the box” and really show their diversity through their poems. We will share the poems in class and I will give each child an index card and ask them to listen to each student. As they listen to the poems they will write down two things that interest them about each poem and pick one thing to write about. They will then write a short piece about how another student's poem speaks to them through their own experiences. We will do another read around using the “would you like a bean” theory that T-Bird came up with in class, assuring that the students are paying attention while having fun and being engaged. I will then transition into feminist theory by “digging a tunnel and coming up from the cellar”. The students won’t even know their learning. Awesome poem:
ReplyDeleteNichole, we missed you in class today!! I just want you to know that I just laughed out loud (for a long time) reading your incorporation of my "would you like a bean" story from class the other day!!! I told my sister about that discussion in class and she though it was so funny too! Who would have though that all of those years ago, just being a total goof and a dork, that "would you like a bean" would ever be applicable to real life! I never could have seen that coming, not in a million years!
ReplyDeleteMy idea parallels Nicole's - I plan on using Christenson's "Raised By" poetry idea in my unit. I based this off my previous lesson plan that focuses on culture in "The Red Convertible" and then having students interview their family member(s) to come up with cultural terms. I would, as a class, read "Raised by Women" by Kelly Norman Ellis as well as one of the student sample Christenson provides in her section on this activity (I personally really like "I Was Raised by Video Games" by Seth Lee.) I would ask students to create their own "Raised by" poem using some or all of the cultural terms/words/phrases they were able to come up with/gather from family members.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at Christensen’s activities I would like to incorporate “Putting Clothes on the Ghost” and “Raised By” into my unit. I believe the “Raised By” poems allow students to step back and look at the communities they are in and come from, those in which make them who they are today. This is important in the overall unit plan because when we focus on gender theory in literature students will incorporate their own voice and beliefs while having to analyze their up bringing and how their ideologies have been shaped. The “Ghost” activity will aid students with learning descriptive language and even the grammar objective in which students will achieve by the end of the unit. This lesson will specify students work and teach them the importance of detail while learning what students like and creating a closer community within the classroom.
ReplyDeleteMy idea of how to adapt a Christensen idea is to use her "Write that I..." poems structure. I can imagine using this to prompt the students to make up a past (or a future) for one of the characters in the O'Brien collection. So many of the stories refer to characters without really telling what they were all about before the war. It would be interesting to have the students create back stories for these cahracters. (I'm thinking Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, or the Virtnamese man that O'Brien "killed" on the trail in "The Man I Killed") Of course they don't have to pick a character who died. Their "write that I..." could include what they did before, during, or after the war (or a combination.) They could even use the information they do know from the text to write a "Write that I.." from the character of O'Brien's perspective. Anyway, I think that the students could use this prompt to come up with some awesome poems while also contributing to their understanding of the stories. I would also include Christensen's incorporation of the explicit teaching of the importance of listing. I love how she has the student write lists rich with words and phrases just waiting to make it into the final poem. Scaffoding the assignment in this way will help the students feel confident and will greatly aid in producing impressive final poems.
ReplyDeleteLike Tracy, I also like the "Write That I..." poem and have developed a lesson plan in which the students create them based on The Red Convertible. I think it would be a great avenue into their comprehension of the story...much better than a quiz! My hopes for/in the classroom would be that students not only choose to write one for just Lyman or Henry, but also think of their mother or the picture or the car as potential subjects of their poems. We may not see much of their mother, or it may be hard be hard to think of inanimate objects as "characters" but it would be great to see how them personified.
ReplyDelete