The first days of school are behind you and the rest of the semester lies in waiting. Wow.
For this first post, I invite you to share with us something about the STUFF of what you are teaching that excites you, as a reader, as a writer, as a lover of language and of words. Laura knows she is tackling MacBeth to start out the year; Jill knows she will be reading Frankenstein; Amanda knows she will be teaching Romeo & Juliet.
You are becoming English teachers--content specialists--because you love the STUFF that English teachers teach. So, tell us, what do you love--or what will you bring yourself to love--about a text that you will be teaching soon? What aspect of it is "sexy" to you? What about this text makes you want to share it with high school students?
Before we can begin to engage our students, we ourselves must first be engaged with what we are teaching. So, for this week's post, please share with us WHY and HOW you are excited by and engaged with a text you plan to teach soon. You also might think about how you can transfer this excitement and engagement from yourself to your students--how will you provide multiple points of access to this text?
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I LOVE Macbeth. I read it once on my own in high school, but I actually didn't do any critical work with it until the last couple of years at RIC. To begin with, the play is dark and full of creepy imagery, which I plan to discuss with the students (when Lady Macbeth opines that she'd kill a newborn baby and that she calls out to demons to give her the power to carry out the murder she ultimately sticks Macbeth with always gives me chills). I have an anticipation guide that I'm going to give to the students to discuss in pairs; the guide has statements like "It's all right to do whatever it takes to get what you want" with which they can agree or disagree. It's to get them to start thinking about some of the themes of Macbeth. Other than that, I have quite a few quizzes and tests, activities in between, an essay, a presentation, and a Jeopardy review planned for however long it takes to go through the play. I want the students to take away a wider knowledge of Shakespearean language and how timeless these themes really are.
ReplyDeleteLaura,
ReplyDeleteYour passion and energy is GREAT! I love it. As I read your post, and felt the love you feel for this play, the one question plaguing me was: "But, why should the students care about MacBeth?" Once you figure that out, and once you convince them of it, then I think you have your teaching methods for the unit. I like that you want them to take away a wider knowledge of--and maybe a more multifaceted appreciation for--Shakespeare's genius.
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ReplyDeleteOk so I signed in under the wrong thing and I was going to fix it but now I can't remember what email/password/username/whatever I used before so I'll have to post under this...
ReplyDeleteI think I’m going to be teaching a unit on either “The Crucible” or “The Scarlet Letter” and I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down in excitement for either of those books. That was until I started reading “The Crucible” again AS a teacher – I had so many ideas! I want them to act out a skit, create wanted posters for the characters, cast the book as a movie, write a persuasive letter to the townspeople to get the girls off the hook, etc. One of the good things about “The Crucible” is that, although it is about the Puritans and colonial life, it wasn’t actually written in that time so I think that will make it more accessible to the students. The sophomores I’ll be teaching it to have already shown to be thoughtful, intelligent, and curious so I’m really interested to see what they’ll do with the book. These are the kind of kids who can have a whole class discussion about something and more or less stay on topic for the entire period. I’m also excited to see what how they react to it because they have such unique ways of looking at things and expressing themselves, as the girl who said about creation myths, “They all seem to have, like, a main dude who does everything.” I am, admittedly, not as excited about “The Scarlet Letter” but I’m sure I can make it work if I have to.
Oh! I also just want to give a shout out to Jill and let everyone know that her Post-colonialism activity from practicum was AWESOME and the students did amazing with it!
Hello all,
ReplyDeleteI am going to address the Holocaust by teaching Night to my freshmen. I am excited and also somewhat fearful of the material. What if they don't get it or are not excited by it like the dork that I am. Genocide intrigues me and I want my students to understand that the Holocaust was real and that history can teach us so much. The students should come away from this experience questioning the world in which they live in. I may assign a side project researching the genocide happening right now in our world so they can currently relate the text to the world. It is a scary subject to take on but I hope that the material grabs the students' attention and holds their interest.
I am a holocaust freak so I should be able to engage the students and differentiate my lessons so that the students have fun while they are learning.
Hey everybody,
ReplyDeleteI am planning on using the graphic novel "Pride of Baghdad" with my two senior classes. One class is a CP class with 27 kids in it, and the other is an inclusion class, with 15. Rita likes for her classes to do the same work, so I am looking forward to teaching the same lessons twice. While "Pride" is probably going to be my main text for this unit, I plan on incorporating different bits of text--from a children's book to a chapter from Suzanne Collin's Mockingjay (the third/final book in the Hunger Games series) and maybe even some Harry Potter. My major theme for this unit will be something along the lines of the effects of war from different perspectives--children, animals, the soldier, those in command...
I am still putting together my final thoughts on this, trying to map everything out so it all fits together. While I know that the students aren't going to LOVE every thing I plan, I do hope they enjoy it and appreciate it more than reading a Brit Lit novel! We'll see...
If you all have any suggestions, I am open and would appreciate it.
See you on Tuesday.
Jill--
ReplyDeleteSome ideas came to mind for your unit. I am SO excited you are teaching a graphic novel!! You might check out a film called Waltz with Bashir. You might also use/check out excerpts from Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone as well as Walter Dean Meyer's Fallen Angels. These three texts are all about how young adults are able to deal with the incontestable suffering of war...and the guilt of having killed. You might also find a place for "The Red Convertible." It is, after all, a story about the affects of war.
Keep us posted--stay engaged in it all!
Nicole-
ReplyDeleteI have taught Night many times and have lots of ideas to share with you. One of my primary focal points in teaching the novella and in teaching about the Holocaust is to personalize it--to make it NOT simply about "those poor people," but to make it about the person sitting next to them in class. Because Jewish-ness is a foreign concept in North Providence (nearly...let's face it!), and because genocide is something that happens in other countries (not true, but a popular nationalist perspective), students may understand the literature you teach but may not truly understand the depth of the issues at hand.
So, you might decide to show a film to bring the concept back home, so to speak. Something like "The Wave"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00132XZNI?ie=UTF8&tag=thewave-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00132XZNI
I also highly, highly recommend that you check out the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website:
http://www.ushmm.org/
I did a 2-week workshop there a few years ago that blew my mind--their resources are amazing.
Also, you may connect with the Holocaust Education & Resource Center of Rhode Island.
http://www.hercri.org/
You may even consider a fieldtrip to RI's oldest synagogue, in Newport. Who knows--think BIG!
Kathryn,
ReplyDeleteI am super excited to read your post because I LOVED hearing that, upon cracking open The Crucible for the first time as a teacher, your mind was making one of those webs that we became so adept at in our practicum class last semester!! YAY! You make teacher proud!! ;-)
I think your mind is going in all the right directions--all ten million of them. Skit, wanted posters, letters to the villagers....I LOVE THOSE IDEAS. Please continue to cultivate these engaging ways to pull students into a text. After all, what is one of our main goals?
Students should be SURPRISED that they liked the text!
And, that surprise should come as a result of their teacher's genuis!
Develop the WANTED POSTER idea...please. And the letter/plea ideas. Both RAFT assignments--both awesome.
I am excited that I will be able to use some of my unit from Practicum focusing on some of the works of Tim O'Brien. I love this author and feel very comfortable teaching the content. I am going to use his writing to teach Point-of-View, tone, and internal conflict (all part of the 9th and 10th grade curriculum at Vets) and also to teach a very paired down version of my critical lense conponent. Some methods I am planning on using are a word knowledge chart for pre-assessment, Take a walk with a line, possibly story mapping, quick writes answering some analitical questions (per Fred's request) and workshopping some experimental vignettes to be put into an ongoing "writer's notebook" folder for possible use/revision later in the year when Fred does the writer's notebook culminating project with the students.
ReplyDeleteBTW, sorry this post is on the late side, but something very awesome and unusual happened to me this weekend. My husband surprised me with a spontenious camping trip to the Cape for my 35th birthday this weekend. He planned everything (including babysitting) and sprang it on me Friday after school! I was so surprised because my husband is not normally the romantic surprise vacation type, so I had to seize the moment while I could! I had too much to do last night when we got back to get ready for this morning so the post had to wait. Since it is not likely that Adam will be springing anymore romantic get-aways on me for a while, I shouldn't have a problem getting my post up sooner next time!! So, I apologize for the late post, but at least I did have a really great weekend.
See you all tommorrow night!
And sorry I spelled tomorrow wrong!
ReplyDeleteTracy--You are forgiven. There is plenty of room in my world for romance! ;-)
ReplyDeleteOooh, good call on "The Red Convertible." I do think that would be a perfect supplement to my unit. Thanks!
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ReplyDeleteWow - there's nothing quite as inspirational as conspiring with your peers...I am just so enthralled by these posts! You all have such incredible ideas...I could write forever about them. I realized also that class time and the blog are almost not enough to brainstorm about all this good stuff...is there any way we could all get together outside of class to go over this kind of stuff? (I know we are all so busy, this might be impossible!)
ReplyDeleteI am psyched about the R&J content, but my ideas tend to inflate to impossible proportions and I lose sight of the present text in an effort to persuade the kids to appreciate the greatest context - real life. Music remains my go-to vehicle when I want to convey themes. There's a Warren G quote that I feel embodies this philosophy: "Rhythm is life, and life is rhythm." A heartbeat is the most primal, universal theme to all existence, and I feel that music evolved from the pulse.
Lach - When you said "world in which we live in," I couldn't help but think of "Live and Let Die" and let my mind wander into a tangent incorporating that song into your unit!
I really want to pull the focus wayyy out and use Weezer's "Pork and Beans" video (it would take awhile for me to explain how this one works, but it works, I swear!) but I'm not sure if this would be too broad when we have a lot of text to cover.
However, in an attempt to provide a broader, more tangible context for iambic pentameter, I kept trying to find a reggae song (as the emphasis in reggae is on the off-beat) BUT one that would follow this pattern lyrically, as well - I was thrilled when I remembered "Clash City Rockers," and I can't wait to see what the class thinks of it! I'm going to ease them into it with a "Green Eggs and Iambs" lesson I found online before springing the song on them. Students will (lightly) bang their hands on desktops to the unaccented/accented beats, then transition into the Prologue. I hope to show them that certain syllables are accented for affect and meaning.
I'm also going to use Taylor Swift's "Love Story" song...I also plan for the students to do a sort of "scavenger hunt" for assigned characters, and create post cards from Verona (or Mantua! Or the Tomb!) to/from characters.
I tend to get caught up on too many big ideas, and I absolutely love the projects mentioned above...I think I could use more brainstorming like that with you all to balance (or, more accurately, make tangible) these vague abstract concepts.
You're all such gifted educators and I am endlessly wowed by your technical skill!
Amanda - I'm so happy someone else is as obsessed with bringing music into the classroom as I am! I've started doing this little ridiculous "game" with the hour it takes me each way going to and from school - I put my ipod on shuffle and I try to see how many songs I can connect to literature or things I could possibly want to do in the future in the classroom. Sometimes I'll go without finding anything but there will be days when I feel like I find so much! For example, driving home today, I realized that the Dead Kennedys' "Kill the Poor" is THE PERFECT supplement to Swift's "A Modest Proposal."
ReplyDelete-Kathryn
Kathryn!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThat is a brilliant connection--Dead Kennedys and Jonathan Swift! I love it!
Manda--
ReplyDeleteCheck out "Romeo & Juliet" by Dire Straits, too.
Love your idea for teaching the rhythm of iambic pentameter. Love your Warren G quote, too! (REGULATE!)
Hi Everyone!
ReplyDeleteSo I'm glad I waited until today to post because my lesson plans and ideas have been all over the place until tonight! My overall unit plan is based upon senior project. The goal is for students to fully embrace their topics by researching their passion. In order to do so my lessons will focus on finding the students passions and writing about them. Once the students have selected a topic, Janine and I discussed having the students write a proposal as to why they chose their topic and to select a theme song that they can take with them throughout their journey. After seminar tonight I am also thinking about having students create a symbol out of play dough which signifies their passion for senior project. The students will be asked to present their proposals to the class allowing them to practice their oral presentation skills. Janine wants to have them practice this at least once each semester in order to prepare them for their final presentations. I am very excited to see this lesson plan carried out because it incorporates music! What student doesn't enjoy music! In their introduction letters the majority of the students wrote they love music. Have a good week everyone!
Kathryn - as a senior in high school I did my final paper comparing those! Biafra was no doubt inspired by Swift...I love that ipod shuffle quiz you give yourself; I can't wait to brainstorm with you on music whenever there's a chance, it sounds like we'd really get eachother going! I'm really not "up" on modern music, though, which is something - like Nicole - I'm asking from my students so that I can familiarize myself with their experience.
ReplyDeleteNicole, I am doing a similar lesson for my first foray into teaching! I'm having students either write me a letter, or choose their spirit animal and write about why they've chosen what they've chosen...and I wanted to know each student's 'theme song,' or just favorite all-time song, as well. I'm eager to hear what our kids will all come up with, I imagine there will be surprises on the horizon...for example, we now know Laura has an inner Getty Lee! (Everytime I look at you now, Laura, I just hear "..of SALESMEN!")
All your lessons sound awesome! And I'm dying to know what this post-colonial lesson was all about, Jill!