Search results matching tags 'writing' and 'good mood'

Move From What to Why!

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:32:26 GMT

We and our students are immersed in media today. Look at the numbers:

Arguably the most frightening statistic is that 95% of the media is owned by five companies (Time Warner, VIACOM, Vivendi Universal, Walt Disney, and News Corp). So, how do we teach our students to wade through this morass of information, this new world of constant persuasion?

We teach them to be discerning, critical readers. We teach them to be rhetors.

However, an important shift must happen in our classrooms, especially for those of us teaching high school English students. Our students are pounded over the heads with setting, character, and theme from the time they enter elementary school and on into high school. They get the basics, but we sometimes drive the kids to look only for those ideas, ideas that can be found almost literally on the page.

We need to move from what and where to why.

What I mean by this is that we often ask students what the meaning of a literary term is (the what) and then to find examples in the text (the where), at times actually having the students touch the page for the location of the term’s employment. This is a basic skill, a rudimentary skill at the lower end of a taxonomic scale (usually Bloom’s or Marzano’s).

Let’s move kids beyond this and get to the why. Why did the author choose this setting? Why was alliteration used in that name? Why was this the best metaphor to use (or was it)? Why is the paragraph structured this way? Why is this sentence structured in such a way?

This leads the kids away from searching the text for answers and towards searching the text for meaning. This allows for nuance, not black and white assignments and activities. This moves the kids towards true analysis.

Ultimately, I want to see my students understanding the reasons authors make choices. Whether I use a novel, short story, editorial, advertisement, virtually any text, I want my students discussing the why when we analyze a text and this requires a close textual analysis. This means I have to move my students from defining and locating to analyzing.

It’s a daunting task at times but a necessary one if I want my students to become successful navigators and explorers in this Information Age. If I want my students to become citizens who contribute to our democracy, I need to help them critically read, question, and discover the nuances of argumentation and the means of persuasion.

Filed under: Good Mood, Lessons, Literature, Reading, Writing

6 For 1: What a Deal!

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:35:50 GMT

A while back I wanted my students to write more, but I knew I didn’t have the time to assess more. So, like Miniver Cheevy, I “thought, and thought, and thought/ and thought about it…scratched [my] head and kept on thinking…/coughed, and called it fate,/ And kept on drinking.” Ok, not really, but that’s a great poem for allusions and the differences between Romanticism and Realism.

Anyway, I came up with a simple idea: each day in class the students compose a 1-2 paragraph mini-essay after choosing a prompt from a list I created based on what we are reading at the time. We do this for six days, numbering each essay one through six, and then on the seventh day I roll a die to determine which essay I collect. The students have 20 minutes in class to write, and then they are responsible for finalizing each draft that night or on the weekend.

Students who are absent the day I collect the work receive the same treatment; when they walk in the room, I roll the die and the result may not be the same as the rest of the class. That’s just the way chance works is what I tell the students when explaining the process.

The writings (on which the six essays are based) that the students are in the midst of composing are the following:

“I’m A Fool” by Sherwood Anderson,
“Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway,
“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1, by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby, Chapter 2, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and
The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

P.S. As an introduction to the period, I once again assigned the research displays I blogged about last year.

Filed under: American Lit., Good Mood, Grading, Lessons, Literature, Writing

Upcoming in January

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 04:18:38 GMT

I just finished planning for January, and I’m going to be teaching the following this month.

American Literature: First, we’ll review the Edgar Allan Poe writings (“The Raven” and “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell Tale Heart”) as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” I actually used an excerpt of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, which is in our textbook, as an introduction to the Poe unit. King’s piece is great for explaining how people’s curiosity is virtually uncontrollable and how the unknown is the scariest of all scares. This was a fun unit, and the kids loved it. It was the most energetic and intrigued they had been all year.

In January we will be reading Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and looking at Impressionism, Naturalism, and Realism. Then, we’ll follow that up with Nathaniel Hawnthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”

Mythology: We almost finished our examination of Greek mythology but need to finish The Fall of Troy and the tales of Odysseus. That should take us the first week of the month.

Then, we’re going to read Beowulf, compare and contrast Norse Creation with the Greek version and then read some Norse tales. This will finish the semester. We completed our major project this semester, so we have a fun finish to the class. I will probably show a couple films after school and look at how the myths are changed for films (maybe Troy, the early 80s Clash of the Titans, The Odyssey, or the new animated Beowulf). Sometimes I show the kids the documentary about the mythology of Star Wars if time permits. It’s one that the students like (especially when the film director Kevin Smith says “of course” Annakin is the perfect villain to ruin the universe since Annakin is “an emo kid”).

Sophomore Honors: We finished up Ender’s Game before the Winter Break, which the students really enjoyed. Most of the class went out and purchased or shared the sequel during the vacation time. I got a number of e-mails regarding the Ender and Bean books. It’s nice to see the kids inspired to read more.

This month we’re looking at classic fairy tales and then reading William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. We’ll compare and contrast the film with the novel, and we’ll look at how Goldman satirizes fairy tales and contemporary society. We may even compose an ABC story which I’ve blogged about in the past.

That’s all for now. TTFN!

Posted in American Lit., Good Mood, Honors, Lessons, Literature, Movies, Mythology, Pop Culture, Reading, Writing

Student Essays

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:24:06 GMT

Go check out GraphJam.com. This site has some great commentaries on life through different styles of graphs. Maybe some could even be incorporated into a classroom. Here’s a funny one. The original location is here.

Posted in Good Mood, Snarky, Writing

The Wagon Wheel

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:06:41 GMT

Last week I tried something called The Wagon Wheel. I numbered off my students 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, etc. and then had the ones form a circle shoulder to shoulder facing outward while the twos faced the inner circle. If an odd number of students are in class, you can jump into the outer circle.

Then, I asked the entire class a question and the inner circle students answered it for 30 seconds to the outer circle students facing them. Next, the outer circle students responded back, and then I allowed the students to discuss back and forth for up to a minute longer.

When I told the class to rotate, the outer circle students moved 1-2 students clockwise. I then gave another question for the students to discuss. During this Wagon Wheel I used 6 questions for the students to discuss, which took about 20 minutes or so.

I then sent the students back to their seats and asked them to write a 2 minute response about what they learned, discussed, and felt during the exercise. The only rule for the writing session was that they needed to write for the entire two minutes.

This took about 25 minutes, allowed students to move around a bit, kept them talking about the literature, and provided time for reflection, and I still had the second half of the class for a vocabulary activity.

Best of all, my students really enjoyed it!

Posted in American Lit., Good Mood, Lessons, Literature, Writing

Going to be a Good Week

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:16:30 GMT

After such a long week this past week, I’m psyched for our four-day week ahead.

First, I get to start teaching my favorite Shakespearean play: The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. We have already learned some background information through a video and a history chapter (and I can say learned because all but one student really aced the background quiz), and we have had a Shakespearean insult contest–always a blast! Tomorrow we’re going over some vocabulary and then jumping into a conversation about theories on leadership before starting the play.

Plus, I get to start moving into The Great Gatsby this week. We’re creating bulletin boards detailing the 1920s and reading “Soldier’s Home” (Hemingway), “I’m a Fool” (Anderson), and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald). The kids love the last one, especially when Bernice pulls out her scissors. Read these stories. They’re great! (Here’s a link to last year’s boards.)

Penultimately, my new mythology class is starting to learn about Prometheus and how he became a symbol of righteous rebellion against unjust authority. Kids love rebels. This leads us into the Underworld, which is always a popular unit where we try to design what the Underworld should look like. Then, we create our own Underworlds with a theme (much like a Dante’s Inferno-type rendition with themes). It’s fun and the kids know the Underworld once we finish. One of my favorite designs (of how a group thought the Underworld should look) included the band Styx playing “Mr. Roboto” for eternity to tortured souls.

However, the best news is this: no administrative meetings. I had enough of those last week. Oh, and did I mention it’s only a four-day week? And we have a four-day weekend upcoming? Things are looking up.

Posted in American Lit., Good Mood, Honors, Lessons, Literature, Mythology, Reading, Writing

ABC For Learning

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:16:53 GMT

I have been thinking for the last few days (sad, I know, during vacation time) about how I want to conclude the first semester with my Sophomores. We will be reading The Princess Bride during the final two weeks of the semester before finals begin, so I wanted one more writing assignment to finish off the first half of the class.

Now, I have decided. We will compose an ABC paper. “What is an ABC paper?” you may ask. Well, it is a 26 sentence paper with each sentence beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. The first sentence begins with the letter ‘A’ and the second sentence begins with the letter ‘B’ and the third begins with a ‘C’ and so on. Since we will be reading a parody of the fairy tale story, I think I’ll have the students retell a fairy tale of their choosing.

But, there’s a catch. The 26 sentences have to be perfect! That’s right: no grammar errors, no punctuation errors, no misspellings, no word usage errors, etc. The paper will be worth 100 points or zero points. In a sense this will be the final exam for writing in the class (and the rest of the final will be the vocabulary, literary terms, and the rest of the course content), and I’ll allow the students to rewrite as many times as they want until the day before the final.

I will split my final two weeks of classes into two parts: the first half will be for discussing The Princess Bride, and the second half will be writing and editing time for the ABC paper. I will help students as well without telling the students answers. When I help edit the students’ papers, I will simply put a check beside the lines where I see an error, and the kids have to figure out the error and make the necessary corrections. I will mark the first three errors I see and then hand the paper back to the student, so he/she can make the corrections and ensure the errors do not repeat. I think this will be a good practice for the students, and this group is extremely driven to locate every error, essentially making everything perfect. Here’s the opportunity for perfection.

What I like about the ABC paper is that the students have to become creative. Varying sentence structures must be used, new words are learned, past vocabulary words are used, the writing is entertaining, and the students can’t just shrug off simple errors for the loss of a few points. I think they’ll appreciate the challenge and rise to it.

Posted in Good Mood, Honors, Lessons, Vocabulary, Writing

The Crucible Project

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:23:01 GMT

I gave my College in the High School students (an American Literature class) a project to go along with the conclusion of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. They had the options below, and every one was chosen by one of the groups of three. Each group had to choose one option in each part.

Part I: Compose a full block business letter explaining in detail how two characters are foils or compose two Shakespearean sonnets connecting three characters in the final couplet of each (no repeated characters).

Part II: Compose and perfrom a scene (on video) occurring after the final act of the play or perform a scene from the play in class with the class as your live audience. Note: Part of this class is a performance and literature class, so the students have periodic performances.

Part III: Choose a quotation or passage deemed the heart of the play and create a visual representation of it or create a storyboard/mini-comic of one act.

Part IV: Only one choice: create a chart detailing how 20 literary terms/devices are employed by the author, include a quotation as proof, and explain the effect of the term/device on a character, the act, or the play.

So far, I’m half-way through the projects and they are fantastic!

What other ideas could I include for a future project of this type? What do you do?

Posted in American Lit., Good Mood, Lessons, Literature, Movies, Poetry, Writing

On The Font Lines

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:27:22 GMT

For those of you who love fonts or just an interest in them, here are a few enjoyable sites:

a College Humor video about the Council of Fonts,
a movie about Helvetica,
a funny interview about banning a font, and
a poster I think all journalism teachers should have (buy it here).

Time for Persuasive Speeches

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:11:28 GMT

With my Sophomore Honors students, the final unit remaining is the persuasive speech unit. Generally, the students do quite well with these 3-5 minute speeches, and I require the following: three types of sources (i.e. periodical, internet source, survey, scientific study, interview, etc.), a minimum of eight solid facts, an anecdote on the chosen topic, a visual aid used [...]