Beach ch. 12

The last reading! Teachers can assign students informal writing to help students think before they are expected to produce polished, determined, and definitive work. Students can record their thoughts through freewriting, notes, lists, journal entries, maps, diagrams, blogs, or even artwork. This type of writing should be spontaneous, exploratory, tentative, subjective, expressive, and even contradictory. In my own experience with informal writing, it has allowed me to materialize my thoughts without judging the quality of my work or ideas. Some of my best writing has sprung from informal writing. Often, when I use informal writing to direct my formal writing, I will only keep a the basic idea and maybe a few sentences—revised, of course—of my informal writing.

Ratz

As a new teacher, giving my students as much autonomy as Ratz did seems intimidating. I’m willing to give my students more autonomy when I have a few years of experience, but I’m not willing to try it now. Too scary. However, I really loved some of his ideas. I liked some of the culminating assessments: dramatic reinterpretations, deleted scenes, alternate ending, online profiles for the characters in the text, character improvisations, and text-based product advertisements. I really liked his MySpace characterization idea; however, I will adapt it to suit facebook because I think facebook it more popular today. I really think reading Shakespeare can be enjoyable for students so long as the teacher is creative and allows for creativity. After our drama/Shakespeare unit, I’m inclined to have my students engage in more hands-on, student-centered activities. I’m going to teach Romeo and Juliet next semester, and now I’m really excited to incorporate reader’s theater.

Neal/Miller

Both Neal and Miller advocated the use of children’s picture books in the classroom, specifically the English classroom. Like these two teachers, Dr. Dean introduced me to the power of picture books in the secondary education. Dr. Dean uses them as model texts for good sentences and as springboards for ideas and other writing. I think they are a wonderful resource. Because they employ an economy of language, the sentences in picture books are well-written but concise. They serve as excellent models for good writing. I am willing to use picture books in my classroom. However, most of them are too expensive. They range from $10 to $20 dollars. Like everything I’ll buy as a teacher, I’ll have to find them at a discount price or beg for someone else to pay for them.

Class Discussions

How do you set up a successful discussion?

I think three features create successful discussions: prepared students, good questions, and equal participation. First, students should be prepared for discussions by coming to class having already read the material and formed opinions about it. It’s difficult to discuss something you are not familiar with. Secondly, teachers need to prepare good, meaningful questions. These questions need to be thought-provoking, controversial, or open-ended. Finally, everyone should have equal opportunity to contribute to the discussion. This means that a few students don’t dominate the discussion while the more silent students go unheard. For this to happen, teachers can use homogenous small-group discussion or silent conversations, to name a few strategies. Ultimately, students need to be held accountable for contributing their opinions.

Dye: “Graphic Organizers to the Rescue!”

Graphic organizers can help teachers, students, and parents. They help teachers know exactly what needs to be covered in class; the provide students with scaffolding as they expand their schemas and link new information; and parents can understand when their children are learning in class with a quick glance. In my own experience, everything I give my students a graphic organizer to augment their notes or assignments, the quality of their work improves.

Here are the steps Dye enumerates to create graphic organizers:

1. Select the information you intend to present to the students. This may be a chapter, or a story, or a certain concept.

2. Decide what key components are necessary for the students to learn.

3. Create a graphic representation of that information. Your graphic chart should identify the key concepts or components and help illustrate the linkages among the key elements of the concept.

4. Help the students see the connections by examining the information in the graphic organizer.

Bromley

There were two ways I learn (at least consciously) new vocabulary. Whenever I enroll in a new class, I notice each professor uses certain words. The words I don’t know, I write down and look up later. By the end of the semester, I know most, if not all, the words and concepts my professor uses. The other way I learn new vocabulary is by reading. Depending on the text, I’ll keep my computer nearby with dictionary.com open. When I come across a word I don’t know, or a word I’m not sure about, I quickly type it in and read its definition. These strategies seem to work for me. While learning these words doesn’t always translate to my using them in my own diction, I can at least comprehend them. As far a vocabulary instruction goes, I think the main goal is comprehension. When students learn to comprehend new vocabulary, they will be able to read and understand a text. The vocabulary usage will come, but I think comprehension is the most important.

Beach: Graphic Novels

I am a convert to graphic novels. I was only introduced to them this semester in ENGL 420. I've read at least one a week since then. I love them. I find them challenging and interesting; graphic novels cause me to think symbolically and think visually. I've actually been surprised with how difficult graphic novels are to understand because of how much inferences I have to make. However, I find them visually stunning and rewarding. I am excited to read Hinds' The Odyssey--I just finished Beowulf. I think graphic novels are an exciting and challenging medium to tell stories. I'm excited to use them in my classroom.

Incorporating Literary Lenses

One of the most interesting things I’ve done as a college student is learn and analyze books, movies, and life through theoretical lenses. I don’t know why we wait until college to teach students these theories. I think that high school students should being learning them. I think one way of implement these theoretical approaches it to ground students together (3 or 4 students), assign them a poem or short story, and give them a lens to interpret it through—just like we did in class on Wednesday. Then, each group can explain their interpretation of the text to the class so everyone can see how each lens yields a unique interpretation. Also, instead of simple book reports, I can have my students view at their home reading through a critical lens. Students can pick the book and the theory. I think critical theory can make the English class more relevant.

Beach ch. 12 (132-8)

Reading poetry has always been difficult for me. It wasn’t until recently that I actually found reading poetry enjoyable. Beach gives three suggestions that I think would really help get students invested in poetry: (1) have students bring in their own poems and/or find poems online that they enjoy; (2) construe the definition of poetry by including concrete poems and song lyrics; and (3) pair poems with stories or novels instead of teaching a poetry unit. I also like the idea that poetry should be performed, not just read. Students should select a poem and perform it for the class. I also thing that in order to understand poetry, students need to be taught to respond to key words and phrases, visualize the scene, use their senses, identify with the speaker, and ask questions while they’re reading.

Beach ch 4 & 9

In high school, I red Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, and The Lord of the Flies. As I’m not approaching these classics from a teacher’s perspective, I view them a little differently. I’m excited yet reluctant to teach them. I’m excited to teach them because they are timeless works that address universal human experiences and themes. However, they’re old; they’re full of archaic syntax and complicated structures that turn modern students off to them. When I say I read them in high school, I really mean I sat in discussions in which others students—certainly not I—read them. I didn’t like them when I was younger because they had little appeal to me. That, then, begs the question: how can I make the canonical literate accessible and enjoyable for my students? I think the easiest answer is teaching the themes, not just the books. The books are simply vehicles to explore universal themes of the human experience. I can ask essential questions—any open-ended questions that would lead to fruitful conversations—about the books. I can also make my discussions on literature more interesting by using theoretical lenses to augment ideas and conversations. For example I can have my students analyze literature through a reader-response perspective, the archetypal perspective, a Marxist perspective, a deconstruction perspective, a gender perspective, or a postcolonial perspective.

"Adolescents and Text; Scaffolding the English Canon With Linked Text Sets"

To me, this article was all about integrating relevant modern and digital texts into the class to augment and support classic literature in the English classroom. Because of today’s technology, students now may find classic literate as dull, boring, and irreverent. However, if teachers provide different multi medias and revenant essential questions, students will be interested and engaged with classic literature. I don’t want to teach English because I love books—because I do—I want to teach English because I want to engage my students with the analytical tools they need to think critically about their lives. It seems only natural, then, to integrate Linked Text Sets into the classroom. I want the reading skills I teach my students to transfer over to their everyday lives, which are now heavily influenced by technology. I’m going to bring music, film, photography, art, websites, and visual representations into my classroom. As much as I love literature, I’m more interested in understanding the human experience—and LTS are now part of the human experience.

Beach ch 13

Teaching literature not only teaches students how to engage in difficult text, which will prove an invaluable skill as adults, but it teaches students how to analyze the world and engage in critical discussion. So we should assess whether or not students can engage and discusses ideas, not just test whether or not they know who Pip is. There are three types of knowledge: declarative (what is it?); functional/procedural (how do I do it?); and generative/conditional (where can I use this again?). We should balance assessment between the three. Other than multipliable choice “objective” tests, students can demonstrate their knowledge through journals or blog responses, written essays, multigenre projects, presentations, discussions, art projects, multimedia essays, portfolios, or personal narratives (just to name a few).