Revised Reading Conceptualization Paper

Growing up, I was just as likely to be found curled up with a favorite book as I was to be found outside playing with my friends.  I have always adored reading, as it provides an opportunity for me to escape my life and into a world of fantasy and magic, or to a place where people can change the world.  The genres of fantasy and science fiction are my first and deepest loves when it comes to reading.  To me reading is a way to enter a world where you can imagine yourself as the hero in a story, where you have special powers and abilities that allow you to fight evil and make the world a better place.  When the Harry Potter series swept the world, one of the biggest draws for me as a reader was that I could imagine myself in that world.  I waited and waited for my Hogwarts letter, and even when it didn’t come, I still had my imagination to take me places.  It engaged me in the story, and allowed me to create my own stories in the process.

While this model is easy to apply to fantasy, where the world has a magic system in place, it can also be applied to just about any genre.  The idea behind reading holds true: the reader can put herself into the story in order to experience something she either never has before or never would have the chance to experience.  It is an exercise in changing perspectives in order to have new and different experiences.  There are exercises that teachers can use to scaffold students into perspective changing.  I used a debate format this quarter during my multi-day teaching where I had students come up with ideas on how the same situation would make two different characters feel.  I think for many students, fantasy, or whatever their genre of choice is, playing with perspectives is the gateway that teachers should follow to get their students interested in reading.  Students can learn to empathize with a character whose experiences are different from their own.  This empathy for characters makes reading more enjoyable and once they recognize that reading is not always a bad thing, then they will have more motivation to work through a text.

Getting students to put themselves into a story begins first with the selection of the text.  Even young students recognize that there seems to be a difference in what they want to read and what their teachers want them to read.  This dichotomy of pleasure reading and school reading is what I feel is the most important obstacle to overcome when we want students to engage with a text.  If teachers can find texts that will appeal to their students, then they’ve taken a huge step in helping their students to come to enjoy reading and perhaps not find it such an arduous task.  I worry that finding these texts that appeal to young adult readers will be difficult for me to do as an adult, but also that when I do find them, that teaching them will be met with resistance by the administration and parents.

Because the presence of the canon in the classroom is something that I suspect will important to the administration the challenge will then becomes how to make the canon more appealing to students.  I think the key here remains the same as it does for other texts: make the text relatable and relevant to students.  Shakespeare is an important part of the canon, but most students shut down and tune out when they discover they’ll be reading a Shakespeare play out loud.  It’s not an exciting way to read a text, especially a play, and makes it difficult to get into the text and relate to it.  There are so many other options out there to teach something like Shakespeare.

I’ve observed a teacher who uses the Manga Shakespeare version to teach Romeo and Juliet.  It contains word for word the text from the play, but puts it in a more visual, and often more familiar, format for students.  The use of dramatic inquiry is also a strategy that can be employed to help students understand themes in a text.  Experiencing this technique with MacBeth, I could also see using dramatic inquiry in the situations where you didn’t want to have students read the whole text, for whatever reason.  The instruction can be focused down to certain moments in the play, with the intent being to bring out themes by accessing students prior knowledge and curiosity.

Shakespeare is part of the canon that even if I were given choice I don’t plan on removing.  I love it too much, and see the value in it partly because so many others texts that students are exposed to allude or reference Shakespeare.  As a teacher, I want my students to develop the same passion that I have for reading, and as a first step in this direction, I want to show them that I have that passion.  I think it’s important for students to know that their teachers read for fun too, and in a lot of cases, what their teachers are reading for fun, and what their teachers read for fun as kids.  I plan on having some book shelves devoted to pleasure reading books, so that my students can check out books from there.  Part of my plan for these shelves is to allow students to suggest of request certain books to be made available there.  These shelves will also play a role in the classroom because I plan on trying to set aside time for sustained silent reading.  I found that the biggest reason I wouldn’t read in high school or college was because I couldn’t set aside the time for it, so by providing my students with that time in class, I will be removing that obstacle at least to some extent.

The environment that students are expected to read in also contributes to their feelings about reading.  For me, in kindergarten and first grade there was the giant carpet where the teacher read to the class, and then in later grades as I began to learn to read there were comfy, poufy chairs that I could read in placed around the classroom.  And then when I reached middle and high school, suddenly reading was serious business, and you had to sit in your uncomfortable, too-small desk and analyze a text that you had no interest in.  When I have my own classroom, I want to have a special space a dedicated reading space to help communicate to students that reading doesn’t have to be an uncomfortable experience that they want to avoid like the plague.   Whether or not my students’ experiences are similar to my own or not, I think a great deal of good can come from having a comfortable classroom environment.

Overall, I think reading is very important to the future of our students.  It is an important skill for them to have in the “real world.”  This skill doesn’t just mean reading books or magazines, but also reading street signs, directions, text messages, movies, emotions, and much more.  A person who is a skilled reader can take stock of a situation and make informed decisions about what choices to make.  They can use their skill with reading to read the world around them and shape their lives in accordance with what they discover.

Being literate gives students opportunities to read texts to continue on their path of learning as they progress into adulthood.  It provides them with an escape from their daily lives.  It gives them things to think about that they never would have considered before.  They can learn new things, and also learn what other’s actions have led to in the past.  They can internalize ideas, make connections to their lives, and reshape their thinking.  It gives them a way to build their vocabulary and provides them with topics and ideas to speak about.  Reading, in its various forms, is so embedded in our culture that to even consider a life without it seems ridiculous.

Students who are unfortunately labeled as remedial or struggling readers often just need to try a different approach to reading.  If a student doesn’t understand the written word, then maybe teach with a graphic novel in order to combine visual aids.  It the writing on the whole is a problem, then maybe they’ll benefit from seeing a theatrical version of the text.  Maybe they can’t understand a text unless they’re part of it, so use dramatic inquiry or one of the variations of it to help the student become a part of the text.  There are so many different types of students, and so many ways of reading, it is a matter of continued experimentation until the teacher finds the method that matches with the student.  And all these different ways of readings aren’t only beneficial to the remedial or struggling readers, they can help readers of all kinds and levels.  I want all of my students to see all the possibilities that are contained within the concept of reading.

Student Opinion Survey

Please spend a few moments answering the following questions. Your opinions and thoughts matter. You are not required to give your name, so please answer as honestly as possible.

1. Do you enjoy your freshman English class? Explain why or why not.
2. Do you believe that it is important to take English classes in high school? Explain why or why not.
3. Do you enjoy the reading assignments required for this class? Explain why or why not.
4. Do you read outside of school? If you answered yes, describe what you enjoy reading.
5. Do you enjoy writing? If yes, describe what kind of writing. If no, explain why.
6. Do you believe that reading and writing are valuable? Explain why or why not.
7. What are your plans after you graduate from High School?
8. This is a two part question: Do you enjoy classroom discussions? Do you prefer small group discussions versus whole class discussions?
9. What do you believe the value and purpose is of classroom discussion?
10. When you have had classroom discussions, what role do you play in the discussion:

____              Discussion Leader
____             Discussion Contributor
____              The Thinker (silent but listening)
____              The Uninterested (unprepared to contribute)
11.  Who do you think is the Discussion Leader in your class? Explain why you think this.
12.  Rank in order from 1-Favorite to 5-Least Favorite your preferred method of learning:
____            Hands-on Activities (role-play, demonstrations, debates)
____            Lectures
____            Discussions (Large and small group)
____            Projects (presentations, writing projects)
____            Homework assignments
13.  Describe your strengths in reading.
14.  Describe what skills in reading you would like to work on improving.

Paired Analysis of Yvonne Hutchinson’s Approach to Discussion

Yvonne Hutchinson is an African-American high school language arts teacher in the King Drew Medical magnet school in LA, California.  She was born in 1943 in Little Rock, Arkansas and was taught a love of words early on by her mother and early teachers, and has maintained an awe of readings since then.  Yvonne is a National Board Certified teacher, who focuses her class around social consciousness and drawing on her students oral traditions.

Yvonne’s school is a lottery system magnet school, and thus draws on a wide range of students with varying backgrounds.  The King/Drew Magnet High School student body consists of a majority Black population (72%) including students from Africa and the Caribbean Islands, a smaller group of Latinos (22%) and a small mix of others, (6%), including students of Native American, Indian, Asian, Mid Eastern, and European descent (Where I Began/Where I Begin).  The school also has a socio-economically diverse population.

This diverse population that is present in the classroom provides Yvonne an excellent context for one of her goals.  This goal is to help her students understand what people have in common, in addition to celebrating their own differences.  The idea behind this goal is to promote a diversified and respectful learning community where students draw on their own backgrounds and oral traditions to develop their envisionment of texts that they are experiencing.

Another goal she establishes that draws on the diversity of her classroom is Yvonne’s objective to have her students engage in meaningful discussions about controversial and complex issues, where they can draw on their rich cultural background and make connections to relevant literature.  The reasoning behind this goal is to help her students become engaged citizens who understand the consequences of their actions and inactions, as referenced in their discussion on the use of the “N” word.  She uses a variety of strategies to prepare her students for authentic participation in these discussions.

Early in the year Yvonne uses an anticipation guide to focus students on universal truths.  This allows them to acknowledge their differences so they can focus on their commonalities.  She hopes her students will make their own meaning that is rich enough to engage in a discussion about the text itself, what the text syas about them, and about larger social issues.  This kind of thinking and discussion prepares students to develop habits of mind that encourage critical thinking about similar issues as they confront them in their own lives.

In order to establish a democratic way of participating, Yvonne has established some norms that guide the classroom discussions.  These include: a one sentence minimum response, if only to defer the question; mandatory cogent response when called on by another student; open ended discussion questions; allowing use of stock responses; patience with classmates so that everyone gets a chance to think and respond completely.  These norms reinforce the idea that the class is heterogeneous learning community where the students must learn to work together to construct meaning.  This constructing of meaning begins with students constructing meaning on their own, which they augment with a variety of reading comprehension strategies.

One such strategy is called metacognitive marking.  By marking significant passages, passages that are liked/disliked or agreed with /disagreed with, and passages that prompt questions readers have the opportunity to identify important passages and record their initial reaction.  This pulls each student’s envisionment of the text into class discussion, and gives legitimacy to each student’s response to the text.  In addition, marking up the text allows them to be able to reference these passages in a group discussion, and bring up any questions or thoughts they may have had while reading.  By marking texts students are engaging more deeply with the text because they are consciously interspersing response to the text during reading.  These closer readings prepare students to offer their own interpretations in class, contributing to an authentic discussion.

Yvonne uses authentic discussion in her classroom (in video 3) when she allows students to engage in a conversation-like atmosphere with their peers.   They talk about the issues that resonate with them, without Yvonne butting in to push her own agenda and have students guessing for the “right” answer.  Students are encouraged to exchange ideas and ask questions of each other.  Prior to the discussion students prepare questions that require them to engage with texts at varying levels.  This both requires students to think metacognitively about the ways they respond to literature, and allows for differentiated discussion for students who may struggle with higher levels of engagement.

One strategy she uses to encourage everyone’s participation is having the students work in small groups in which each member is required to contribute to the small group discussion.  Small groups help to relieve the pressure of speaking in front of the whole class, allowing more shy members to participate comfortably.  She also encourages students to work with students who aren’t in their clique, exposing them to a variety of perspective and viewpoints.

Another strategy that Yvonne uses in her classroom to encourage everyone’s participation is the anticipation guide.  By using the anticipation guide she is providing the students with a pre-discussion activity that allows them to collect their thoughts before asking them to engage and speak with their peers.  This allows students who don’t think as quickly on their feet to prepare for participation, and ensures that student responses will be more thoughtful.  Students can also build off these pre-thoughts to ask direct questions of each other, positively utilizing peer pressure in a class discussion.  The discussion that results from these thoughts and questions leads students into the continuing revision of their envisionment of the text.

Envisionment allows for students to make their own meaning of a text based on their own life experiences and to constantly rethink and revise their envisionment as it interacts with other students’ envisionments.  One way this occurs in the classroom is through incorporating students individual reactions to literature, as shown with their +, -, ?, and * metacognative marking, which inherently legitimates each students individual reaction to the text.  The following discussion allows students to constantly revise their initial envisionments and build new understandings of the text as they consider other students envisionments.  They can actually solicit their peers understanding or reactions by calling on them in discussion, a practice Yvonne encourages.

One aspect of her teaching that stands out is her explicit and direct way of approaching and talking about differences in race, ethnicity, and gender.  From the first class, where Yvonne asks students to consider how they arranged themselves in relation to each other in the classroom, she brings the concept of race out into the open.  They notice that they’ve segregated the room along the lines of race.  She then asks them to rearrange themselves so that the class in more integrated.  She acknowledges their tendency as human nature, and then begins to promote one of her overarching goals for the class that we are all human and have more commonalities than may be apparent on the surface.  This approach immediately draws on student background and identity, making this relevant issue a topic of the class.  Students see that this class is a safe place to talk about race, and that they’ll be talking not only about literature, but also the text of their own lives.

Final Paper: My Philosophy of Education

While considering what my philosophy of education is, I found it useful to refer to the first chapter where it outlines that, “at the very least, a coherent philosophy of education is explicit about educational goals, methods for attaining those goals, and the justifications for both” (16).  I will be addressing each of these points throughout the paper in my exploration of my own philosophy of education.  In addition, relating to Jefferson’s ideals, I will be addressing how my philosophy of education reflects how I can prepare my students “for the three major dimensions of life: as individual persons, as citizens in a democracy, and as participants in economic life who must earn a living” (47).

Horace Mann envisions schools as a public good that would represent the values and beliefs of the public, and as “an arm of the government that could achieve social change” (81).  It is difficult to determine what values and beliefs are represented, but if teachers are supposed to represent the values of a democratic culture, which I believe we are, then the ideals I will be attempting to instill in my students are those of respect for diversity, differences, and a pluralism of cultures.   This means, among many other things, respecting differing races, religions, sexual orientations, genders, ethnicities, cultures, socio-economic statuses, and disabilities.  In the English classroom I believe this goal is best achieved by reading a variety of texts from various cultures, societies, and backgrounds.  By examining these texts, and the language used in them, students can begin to understand and respect the diversity present in America, and begin to think about the choices they will have to make, as they become voting citizens in this democracy.

I want to teach my students to become lifelong learners, because with how fast technology and science is advancing today, it will be important for them to be able to remain current with the times, a task that can only be achieved if they continue their education after their schooling years.  Dewey summarized this democratic ideal as “the all-around growth of every member of society” (224).  Only by becoming a lifelong learner can one hope to continue to have a positive effect of society.

I also intend on educating my students in a way that will allow them to have the greatest number of choices in their future career and life.  Every student has the potential to go to college and excel in whatever they put their mind to, so it is my job to give them the skills they need to succeed, but it is the student’s job to choose how to use the skills they have and what direction they choose go in.  While Conant felt that “less-able” students should take a vocational track to prepare them for their inevitable entrance into the laboring, working world, I am of the mind that a teacher should “equip each young person with the knowledge and kills to choose the best post-secondary step for himself or herself, and to have the preparation necessary to succeed at that choice” (223).  While standardized testing is a reality that teachers and students must deal with at this point in time, it is only a small, if realistically important, part of a child’s education.  Teaching to the test is a trap that too many teachers fall into when they become overwhelmed with what seems to be an overfull curriculum and a hugely diverse student population.  But, as Lemann critiques, “The purpose of schools should be to expand opportunity, not to determine results” (223).  So I plan to communicate to my students the importance of passing the standardized test, because as things stand, the tests determine the number of opportunities a student is presented with.

The system of testing that has been become an integral part of American education has led to some strict accountability measures for teachers, that can distract from other goals that teachers may have in their curriculum.  I think colleagues should work together to attain these common school goals, because there is no way that one person can know all there is to know about teaching.  This is only true within a subject matter, but also across the curricula.  As an English teacher, I can benefit from learning ways to integrate math, science, history, art, music, and foreign language into my curriculum in order to help my students make more connection between the material they’re learning, and as such, help them retain it better, and do better on the standardized tests.

The student comes first in my philosophy, because they have unlimited potential, and it is a good education, laden with critical thinking skills and authentic learning experiences, which will unlock this potential.  Students learn best through activities that address their interests, and not all students are interested in the same things, or in the same way.  This means that it is important to differentiate the curriculum in order to appeal to the greatest number of students, and to help the students understand why they are learning a particular skill, and how it may apply to their goals or interests.  This can become especially important for students who don’t come from or align themselves with the dominant culture and society.  They have just as much potential to succeed, but often have very different ways of learning that need to be met.  This means that treating students equally is not necessarily the answer, but rather treating each student as an individual in an attempt to take into account and “respond to difference among students that have consequences for learning” (404).

The best way to appropriately respond to the needs of various students, especially in a secondary classroom, is to have an open communication with them.  I will be asking all of my students at the beginning of the year what their interests are, and how they learn best, and will work their responses into my planning, as well as taking time throughout the year to reevaluate and see if any of those things have changed.  It is also important remember that if a student is not succeeding in my classroom, then it is time to examine what the possible factors in the situation are, and how I can go about improving the student’s chances for success.  The Cultural Difference Theory addresses the fact that all minority cultures have a culture that is different from that of the dominant school culture, and that this mismatch can lead to difficulties for a minority student.  This is a prompting for teachers to work together to determine how to best support these students, and to welcome their insights into the classroom.  When reading multi-cultural literature in an English classroom, the students from different backgrounds can bring a more in-depth understanding to the text.  However, it will be important to emphasize that the minority students aren’t representatives of their entire culture, just as the White, dominant culture students, aren’t representatives of theirs.

My philosophy of education focuses on the students, and their ability to enact social change using the skills that I will help to provide them with.  They are all individual people, who can succeed in whatever path they choose, and it is my job to prepare them for the future, but they will ultimately be the ones to make the choices that lead them on their path.  I hope that my emphasis on democratic ideals, such as respect for all people, in the texts that we read and the critical analysis that we do with those texts, will guide my students to be active members of society who push for change and equality.

MDT Self- Analysis

I thought that my teaching experience went really well overall.  The first day was awesome; the students were interested, engaged, and seemed to be actually enjoying the material.  From my Class Profile of Writers I noticed that this class had difficulty fleshing out their writing to make it interesting and meet required word counts.  That’s what prompted me to focus my lesson on tone words and descriptors.  I think explaining up front why we were focusing on this and how it could be useful for them really got the lesson off to a good start and gave the students some motivation for paying attention.

There are some things I would like to work on and change for the next time I teach.  The first day I spent most of the time (except when I was walking around during group work) up at the front of the room.  Part of this was because I was working with the Smart Board, and was locked down to where it was, but I could have moved around more.  I think that would have helped with students losing focus.  I tried moving around on my second day, but had a tough time with it.  I was reading and would lose my place, and students had backpacks and stuff on the floor that I had to watch out for to be sure I wouldn’t trip.  It is going to be a skill that I need to practice.

Something else I that I need to work on is structuring group work.  I think I made some positive changes from what the students were used to.  I assigned their groups, rather than letting them choose, which kept them much more on task during the group work than they normally are.  But I didn’t plan for what to do when some groups finished faster than others.  I tried to encourage them to make edits to what they had already written, but I was having a hard time coming up with specific prompting questions.  Since my MDT I’ve learned a few more techniques for determining how much more time students need, and how to push and question them more if they finished early.

I think I did a really good job of modeling and scaffolding what I wanted the students to learn.  I modeled note-taking and didn’t even realize it until Eileen pointed it out in her peer response.  I think the modeling of this showed students that we were both doing the work.  It wasn’t like I was putting it all on them to do because I was working right along side them.  I didn’t model as much on my second day, and there was a definite difference in the way the students responded and how motivated and engaged they seemed.

During my teaching I felt as though I took the role of lecturer briefly at the beginning of a topic, but then moved neatly into the position of a facilitator.  This happened more on my first day of teaching, when the kids were much more involved and contributing.  I prompted them with questions and they took the conversation and moved it along nicely.  I noticed that only a few people seemed to be contributing, so I was able to jump in and prompt specific sides of the room.  I did this with sides of the room so that students wouldn’t feel as though I was picking on just one or two of them.

When we shifted into group work and when we were working in the lab I was able to move around and help more one-on-one.  In the lab I worked on reading the last couple of lines the students wrote and trying to prompt them from there if they seemed stuck.  Because we’d discussed and brainstormed some in class the students all seemed to have pretty concrete ideas of where they wanted their writing to go.

I started the students off slowly in the writing process with tone words.  The first thing we engaged in was finding tone words in a piece of text, then we moved on to putting tone words into a piece of text that was already written (a poem), and then I had the students write their own text (a parody) by using tone words to help convey meaning.  From reading some of their previous writing assignment and then reading the assignment that I gave them, they definitely learned something new, or were at least more focused in applying something they already knew.  I think they grew as writers from this experience.  Their writing was more interesting to read and they even seemed to enjoy writing their final assignment.  I think part of this was definitely because they had something to say on the topic, but part of it at least was because they had a new set of tools in their arsenal to experiment with.

I think by time students are junior and seniors they’ve been beaten over the head with the technical aspects of writing, and so I focused my approach to teaching writing more on craft for them.  We worked on being more descriptive, because that would help them make their writing more interesting to read, and it would help them meet their required word counts (which is something I’d heard them fretting over in previous classes).  I also focused on just a couple small aspects of writing.  I had a really hard time narrowing it down at first, but I’m really glad I did, because even with just working on tone words and parody I still over-planned a little bit.

I think focusing on small aspects of writing is an approach that is essential to teach it in a way that students can both understand and apply.  By teaching in small bit you give students the tools they need to improve their writing throughout the year, rather than have a big writing unit and then not really focusing on it again after that, just requiring it.  I would love to implement a once a week writing workshop in my classroom, where once a week we focus on one or maybe two aspects of writing and give students a chance to practice applying that writing in relation to whatever the current unit we’re working on is.  This would help to teach students that writing is in everything they do at school and help them to realize the importance of it.

One thing I would change about my approach is I would have allowed more time for brainstorming.  I asked students to brainstorm and check out with me before they went to the writing lab, but I know I didn’t check everyone, and some students just headed down to the lab without doing any real brainstorming.  I wanted to show them the importance of writing down their ideas briefly before starting to work on a draft of their project, but most students didn’t seem to see the point and didn’t check out with me before jumping into their assignment.

Demo Lesson: Poetry

Focal Texts: Lane Ch 13, Christensen Ch 5
Lesson Title: Re-Thinking Poetry

Purpose/ Goals	The purpose of this lesson is to enlighten students about the misconceptions and irrational fears those often come with writing poetry.  We want to help students re-think the writing processes of poetry by allowing them rely on their own experiences and perspectives. Writing poetry is often considered to be an arduous and overly complex task, but this lesson will simplify this genre for students and get students to feel more comfortable being poets. We also want students to consider how poetry can be used to express social issues and inspire thought and discussion about the status quo.
Objectives	Students will be able to brainstorm ideas and these ideas which will eventually become poems. Students will create a collaborative poem to combine ideas and create a foundation for their own individual writing.   Students will create a poem that will consider different viewpoints within a socio-cultural context that has important implications outside of the classroom.
Assessment	Summative: Students will create and read aloud edited versions of the collaborative poem and their own gender point-of-view poem. This will allow us to determine if they are starting to overcome fears and/or hesitations about writing poetry. They will also being brainstorming in their journals/notebooks, so we’ll be able to tell if they are beginning to understand our methods to begin the writing process.
	Formative: We will be keeping a close eye on whether students seem to struggle coming up with ideas, by walking around the room during individual writing time or paying close attention to what they do share or if they are unwilling to share.  We can adjust the level of explicit instruction based on the perceived level of comprehension by the students.
Community Knowledge and Experience:	We will be asking students to think about and share things that have happened in their own life to tie into their poetry.  This makes the poem they create more personal to them and gives them some ownership in the writing of it.  We will also be asking students to write a poem from a different viewpoint which gives students the tools to examine other members of society by putting themselves in their shoes.  We will be doing these assignments alongside the students and tying in our own experience.
Procedures	Activity One: Collaborative Poem (Approximately 20 minutes) Lyndsey will introduce the lesson. Sarah and Lyndsey instruct students to come up with phrases describing their day from when they wake up to when they get to class.  We will model some examples of what type of phrases they could come up with. Students will write their phrases for approximately one minute (we want this to be very stream-of-consciousness type writing, to increase students’ perceptions about the simplicity of writing poetry) and then students will partner up.  They will share ideas with one another and select their best phrase amongst their partners, sending one person up to the front of the room to write this phrase on the chalkboard. We will then read the phrases aloud in the form of a poem.  “You just wrote a collaborative poem!” (Optional Discussion: Is this a poem? What makes this a poem?) Students will take the poem on the board and re-own it by editing/altering/adding to it to make it their own.  We will model brief examples of this for the students. Students will then get in groups of 3-4 and share their new poems with one another. If there is time at the end of twenty minutes, students who care to share may read their poems to the rest of the class. Activity Two: Rethinking Gender Through Poetry (Approximately 20 minutes) Jan will explain that: “In the previous poem you wrote you started with brief descriptive phrases.  Now we’re going to write a poem from the point of view of a different gender, based on getting ready for school in the morning.” In other words, the poem they have already will serve as the foundation and inspiration for this poem that will rethink gender. Jan will point out examples from what they’ve already written on the board and ask students to think about how the phrase would change if it was from the point of view of a different gender. Different genders include: male, female, transgendered, questioning gender, or anything in between. We want to be as inclusive as possible.  For example: students might think about how they might get dressed, how they would interact with their families or spouses, etc. Jan will explain that students can either use the poem they’ve already written or, if they need more material, begin brainstorming in the same way they did for the collaborative poem. Students will be given 7-10 minutes to write. Adrianne will give some example questions that they can think about when coming up with phrases (“really try to put yourself into the other point of view”): How do you relate to or interact with your family, friends, or people of other genders? How do people treat you? How do you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning? How do you dress? What do you look like? What is your morning routine? How would you be different than how you are now? Would you be different at all? What about similarities? How do you speak? What do you say? What are your beliefs? Feelings? Emotions? Adrianne will facilitate sharing the poems by asking if anyone would like to read their poems out loud. Some of the co-teachers will be participating in this activity so we can begin with our own poems if students feel uncomfortable with sharing. If students don’t want to share at all (or after the initial sharing), we can examine some important questions about their gender poems: How did your poem expose or refute some stereotypes of specific genders? How did this poem show how you think about gender? What were some issues you struggled with while writing?
Resources	We will need: 28 copies of this lesson plan Chalkboard & chalk Copies of the texts Journals/paper for students’ and teachers’ writings

 

MDT Day 2: AU ’09

Multi-Day Teach Day 2: AU ’09

Subject Area: English 11/12 – Contemporary Lit

Title of unit (of which this lesson is a part): Women & Men & Relationships

Lesson Title: Understanding and Writing Parody

Purpose/ Goals	Students should be able to use tone effectively in their own writing.  This skill will help them to use their writing to achieve their goals.  If they can effectively use tone, then they will be able to influence their audience to feel and react they way they want.  They also need to understand how the author can use certain words in order to manipulate his or her audience into feeling a certain way about a subject matter.
Objectives:	I can identify tone and tone words in a piece of text.   I can explain what a parody is and give examples. I can use tone words in a piece of text to make it more descriptive. I can explain how word choice affects the overall tone in a text.
National & Ohio Standards	What are the specific national (professional organization) and/or state standards, key ideas, performance indicators, and major understandings that you will address in this lesson? Explain how this lesson meets these standards in a brief narrative.   Writing Applications Benchmark -       Write responses to literature that provide an interpretation, recognize ambiguities, nuances and complexities and that understand the author’s use of stylistic devices and effects created Students will be writing a response to a piece of text that provide and reinterpretation of the text by changing the original tone that was intended by the author.  They will be keeping specific traits of the original stylistic devices and effects to maintain an homage to the original. Writing Process Benchmark -       Use a variety of strategies to revise content, organization and style, and to improve word choice, sentence variety, clarity and consistency of writing. Students will be exploring how word choice effects tone in a piece of writing.  They will experiment with changing the tone of a text by manipulating the word choice. Writing Conventions Benchmark -       Demonstrate understanding of the grammatical conventions of the English language Students will be writing a parody of a poem or article using standard conventions of English spelling and grammar. Communications Oral and Visual GLI -       Evaluate how language choice, diction, syntax and delivery style (e.g., repetition, appeal to emotion, eye contact) affect the mood and tone and impact the audience. Students will be examining how word choice can influence their audience Reading Applications: Literary Text Benchmark -       Analyze how an author uses figurative language and literary techniques to shape plot and set meaning. Students will be looking at tone words, and how the word choice of a piece of writing can influence the overall meaning of the piece. Reading Applications: Informational, Technical and Persuasive Text Benchmark -       Analyze an author’s implicit and explicit philosophical assumptions and beliefs about a subject By analyzing tone students will begin to understand how to determine the author’s implicit assumptions and beliefs -       Analyze the features and structures of documents and critique them for their effectiveness The tone of a piece influences the way an audience responds to it, and thus how effective the author is in communicating his meaning.  Students will be focusing on tone and how it influences meaning in this lesson.
Assessment	Summative   The summative assessment will take place at the end of the lesson
	Summative   I will be assigning the students a creative writing assignment that will assess their understanding of parody and ability to incorporate tone words into their writing in order to convey an overall tone that is different than the tone of the original piece they’re parodying.  The specifics of the requirements for the assignments are laid out in the rubric. Formative I will be asking for student input through the lesson to help determine if I’m conveying the concepts clearly enough.  This will let me know if they know enough to answer questions.  If no one volunteers answers, then I will first try to reframe the question and ask specific students for input.  If they still don’t seem to understand the concept, I will try re-explaining the material, and then continue by putting them in groups to work. When students are working on their writing assignment, I will be circulating and checking in to see how individuals are coming along.  If any students are having trouble I will help them to look through their packet to find tone words they’d like to replace.

Community Knowledge and Experience:	Students will have been working on tone in the previous lesson, and have probably experienced parody before.  I will try to tap into this knowledge of what parody is by giving a few examples of my own that they may recognize (Men in Tights, Weird Al) and then asking them if they can think of any examples.
Procedures including:   • Opening •Activities • Closure	Opening: (2-3 min)   Bellringer: Vocab Builder (2-3 min) -       Student will present their vocab word to the class Activities: (43-61min) Overflow from Yesterday: -       If needed finish up presentation of poem strips from yesterday Parody Examples: (5-7 min) -       Ask students to think about what they know about Twilight. -       Play Twilight Remix trailer and discuss how it changes the way the audience is supposed to feel about Edward, ultimately mocking the original. Defining Parody: PowerPoint (3-5 min) -       Hand out guided notes worksheet. -       Ask class to define parody.  I write it into the PowerPoint on the Smart Board.  Then I bring up the formal definition of tone. -       Ask class to explain how parody is used and to give possible examples.  I write it into the PowerPoint on the Smart Board.  Then I bring up the formal explanation of how parody is used, and some of my own examples. Explain Renaissance: (3-5 min) -       Briefly explain that the Renaissance was the rebirth of Greek ideals, and a rebirth of art and culture. -       Address how poets and playwrights competed for prestige and often wrote letters to each other and responses to each other’s work. Read “Passionate Shepherd & The Nymph’s Reply”: (2-4 min) -       Tell students that I’ll be showing them some examples of what they can choose to do for their creative writing assignment. -       Hand out worksheet with poem’s side by side, and ask students to get out their tone word packet from yesterday. -       I will read through both poems. Discuss Tone and Parody in poems: (5-7min) -       After I have read through both poems and I will then ask students to take a minute or two to find words that help to convey the overall tone of the poem.  I will then ask students to share with the class some of the words they came up with. -       We will then discuss how the word choice helps to convey the differing views on love, and how the response poem functions as a work of parody on the original.  Some questions I will use to scaffold this discussion are: What is the tone in each poem? What specific words are used to convey each tone? How does “The Nymph’s Reply” respond to or make fun of the original poem? Read “How to be a Good Wife” and “…Romantic Husband”: (5-7 min) -       Hand out a copy of the “How to be a Good Wife” article and read aloud. -       I will engage students in a brief discussion about stereotypes of women.  The prior knowledge from this discussion will draw from the current unit that the students are working on.  Some questions I can ask are: What is the relationship between the husband and wife? What is the relationship between the wife and children? What is the relationship between the husband and children? What are the expectations for the wife? What are the expectations for the husband? -       I will put up a copy of “How to Be a Romantic Husband” on the Smart Board, tell students this is a previous year’s paper written by a student, and I will read it aloud. Examine student model: (5-7 min) -       I will ask the class to give me examples of tone words in the student paper that help to contrast it with the original article. -       We will then discuss the student model’s merits as a work of parody.  I will guide the discussion with some of the following questions: How does the tone of the model differ from the original? What are some of the descriptive words that help shift the tone? How does the model flip the expectations of the original?  What are some specific examples of this? Explain Writing Assignment: (5-7 min) -       I will ask students to get out the song or poem I asked them to bring in as homework for today. -       I will tell students they have a couple of options for their creative writing assignment.  They will be writing either a response poem, or re-writing the “How to be a Good Wife” article.  They will need to get their original piece approved by me if they choose the poem/song option. -       I will hand out the rubric and descriptive sheet for the assignment.  The assignment will be due on Thursday. Option 1: -       Students can write a response to the poem or song they brought in.  They can also write a response poem to certain poems from the current unit in the text book: The Garden of Love (pg 382) An Ancient Gesture (pg 383) One Art (pg 387) Her Kind (pg 389) Down-hearted Blues (pg 406) My Love Swears That She is Made of Truth (pg 413) To A Stranger (pg 418) Option 2: -       Students can re-write the “How to Be a Good Wife” article Present Ideas: (10-12 min) -       I will give students a few minutes to brainstorm ideas for what they want to do for their creative writing assignment. -       I will then have student come to me to get their idea approved and send them down to the computer lab (where Deb will be) to get started writing their assignment. Writing Lab: (remainder of 4th period) -       In the lab, after everyone has run their idea by me, I will be circulating and making sure students are staying on task. -       I will be helping students who appear to be having trouble with the assignment.  I will direct them to look at their tone words packet and identify words in the original piece to replace. Closure: (1 min) -       I will dismiss students from the lab and remind them that their assignment is due on Tuesday.
Resources	What texts, materials/resources, websites, and equipment will you need? How will you access and/or distribute them? -       Copies of Readings – available as handouts -       Smart Board – in classroom -       Computer lab
Applications, Connections, Extensions	I way to make connections to future lessons would be to address how tone is used in speeches (such as political candidates and agendas) so that students can be more aware of how the media and other sources are trying to affect them.  It’s also important for student to be able to use tone to persuade their audience to agree with them whenever they’re trying to use language to get what they want.  If students know that the language they use and the word choices they make will affect the outcome of their appeal, they will be more empowered.
Inclusive Instruction	I will be modeling or showing examples of every activity so that students can hear the activity being described as well as see it done before they make an attempt at it.  I am also giving students a couple of choices for their final writing assignment so that they can choose a topic that is relevant and interesting to them, as well as at a reasonable level for them.

MDT Day 1: AU ’09

Multi-Day Teach Day 1: AU ’09

Subject Area: English 11/12 – Contemporary Lit

Title of unit (of which this lesson is a part): Women & Men & Relationships

Lesson Title: Tone Words

Purpose/ Goals	Students should be able to use tone effectively in their own writing.  This skill will help them to use their writing to achieve their goals.  If they can effectively use tone, then they will be able to influence their audience to feel and react they way they want.  They also need to understand how the author can use certain words in order to manipulate his or her audience into feeling a certain way about a subject matter.
Objectives:	I can identify tone and tone words in a piece of text.   I can use tone words in a piece of text to make it more descriptive. I can explain how word choice affects the overall tone in a text.
National & Ohio Standards	What are the specific national (professional organization) and/or state standards, key ideas, performance indicators, and major understandings that you will address in this lesson? Explain how this lesson meets these standards in a brief narrative.   Writing Process Benchmark -       Use a variety of strategies to revise content, organization and style, and to improve word choice, sentence variety, clarity and consistency of writing. Students will be exploring how word choice effects tone in a piece of writing.  They will experiment with changing the tone of a text by manipulating the word choice. Communications Oral and Visual GLI -       Evaluate how language choice, diction, syntax and delivery style (e.g., repetition, appeal to emotion, eye contact) affect the mood and tone and impact the audience. Students will be examining how word choice can influence their audience Reading Applications: Literary Text Benchmark -       Analyze how an author uses figurative language and literary techniques to shape plot and set meaning. Students will be looking at tone words, and how the word choice of a piece of writing can influence the overall meaning of the piece. Reading Applications: Informational, Technical and Persuasive Text Benchmark -       Analyze the features and structures of documents and critique them for their effectiveness The tone of a piece influences the way an audience responds to it, and thus how effective the author is in communicating his meaning.  Students will be focusing on tone and how it influences meaning in this lesson.
Assessment	Summative   The summative assessment will take place at the end of the lesson
	Formative   I will be asking for student input on an example task after I have modeled a task.  This will let me know if they know enough to answer questions.  If no one volunteers answers, then I will first try to reframe the question and ask specific students for input.  If they still don’t seem to understand the concept, I will try re-explaining the material, and then continue by putting them in groups to work. When the student are in groups I will be sitting in and listening to their conversations as they engage with the material and begin putting it into use.  This will allow me to gage where the students stand in their understanding and judge whether they are yet able to work alone, rather than in groups.

Community Knowledge and Experience:	One of the ways to explain tone is by asking students to think whether or not they’ve ever been told “Now don’t you take that tone of voice with me!” by their parents or caregivers.  I can ask them to connect to their own lives to see if they can figure out the meaning of tone.  By putting some of the lesson into kid-speak, and talking to them on their level, I think I can help them to understand the concepts more fully.   I also will be asking them to create their own interpretation of a bland poem.  This will let them put some of their own voice into their work.  I will be asking them to bring in a poem or song that they enjoy and can connect to as homework for the next day.  This choice in what they want to bring in will allow them to hold some stake in their learning.
Procedures including:   • Opening •Activities • Closure	Opening: (2-3 min)   Bellringer: Vocab Builder (2-3 min) -       Student will present their vocab word to the class Activities: (34-49 min) Defining Tone: PowerPoint (3-5 min) -       Hand out guided notes worksheet. -       Ask class to define tone.  I write it into the PowerPoint on the Smart Board.  Then I bring up the formal definition of tone. -       Ask class to explain how tone is used.  I write it into the PowerPoint on the Smart Board.  Then I bring up the formal explanation of how tone is used. -       Hand out packet of descriptive words and remind students to hang on to this packet for tomorrow. Model Finding Tone Words: Endymion Spring (3-5 min) -       Underline tone words in the text on the Smart Board, and describe how they portray the gloomy tone. Class identifies tone words: Oliver Twist (5-7 min) -       Ask students to take a minute or two to find tone words in the next text.  Then ask for volunteers to come up and underline tone words on the Smart Board.  If no one volunteers, then call on students. -       Ask students what they think the overall tone of the passage might be. Model Poem Strips (3-5 min) -       Show students how I can look in the packet of descriptive words to change the bland poem into something more flavorful. -       Write new version of poem up on the Smart Board. Class Poem Strips (12-15 min) -       Have the class count off into groups of 6 and then hand out a bland poem stanza to each group.  Each group will need to designate a leader to focus and guide the group, a recorder to write down the poem on the group’s sheet and on the Smart Board, a speaker to present the stanza to the class, and 2 word finders to search the packet for appropriate vocabulary. -       Groups 1-3 will be making their bland happy and exciting; groups 4-6 will be making their poem sad, gloomy, and dull. -       Students will be given about 10 minutes to work on improving their stanza.  I will be walking around and sitting in on each group for a minute or two at a time. -       At about the 10-minute mark I will instruct students to begin writing their stanzas on the white boards.  I will have marked out where each group should write their stanza. Read Class Poems (3-5 min) -       I will begin by reading the original bland poem.  Then I will ask the speaker for each group to read their stanza.  Groups will go in order. Discuss how word choice can change tone (5-7 min) -       I will ask students how word choice can affect the overall tone of a piece of writing.  In order to scaffold this I will ask some of the following questions: What are some contrasting words between the happy poem and the sad poem? Why did you choose this word to add to your poem instead of another that carries the same tone? How did you specifically make the two poems you created differ in tone? What would changing this word do to change the tone of the poem? Possible Overflow: Peer-editing -       I will ask groups to revise each other’s poems (1&4, 2&5, 3&6), so that they will be revising the same stanza, but the other tone. -       I will then ask groups to share their revised pieces. Closure: (4-6 min) Briefing for Tomorrow: (2-3 min) -       Tell students that tomorrow we will be talking about parody and begin experimenting with tone in their own original writing. Assign Homework: (2-3 min) -       Ask students to bring in either a poem or a song that uses a specific tone, such as a love song, a ballad about adventuring, a sad song, or a scary poem. -       Remind students that it needs to be school appropriate. -       Tell students that the text they bring in should be between 20 and 50 lines long. -       Remind students to bring their descriptive word packet back tomorrow.
Resources	What texts, materials/resources, websites, and equipment will you need? How will you access and/or distribute them? -       Copies of Readings – available as handouts -       Smart Board – in classroom -       Poem strips – available as handouts -       Whiteboard & markers – available in classroom
Applications, Connections, Extensions	I will be following up this lesson by having them complete a writing assignment that includes tone words to convey a meaning.  I will also address how tone is used in speeches (such as political candidates and agendas) so that students can be more aware of how the media and other sources are trying to affect them.  It’s also important for student to be able to use tone to persuade their audience to agree with them whenever they’re trying to use language to get what they want.  If students know that the language they use and the word choices they make will affect the outcome of their appeal, they will be more empowered.
Inclusive Instruction	I will be modeling every activity so that students can hear the activity being described as well as see it done before they make an attempt at it.  I will also be putting the students into heterogeneous groups so that students can see as many viewpoints as possible, in addition to letting them work within their zone of proximal development.  I will be moving through these groups to listen in and help out where I’m needed to guide students toward understanding.

Final Paper Topic Idea

I’ve been rather baffled about how to go about teaching CLA.  Right now, the thing that I think would be the most useful for my students to learn about and apply in a way that could actually make them aware of their language is learning about point of view.

I’d like to write about an activity where students examine point of view and how, for example, a news story is reported by one group of people, and have students think about how the language and message of the story would change if it were reported by a different, marginalized group of people.  With this topic I should be able to pull in different methods that the students can use to question how language is being used, and then relate those realizations back to how the students themselves use language, and have it used against them.

Critical language awareness help

Original Article here

What and why?

In language teaching, we now recognise that language is not simply grammar, but also a system of ‘communication’. For this reason, we often involve students in sharing information, using language for special purposes, expressing opinions and so on. One result of a view of language as ‘communicating’, however, is that it ignores the fact that people do not use language neutrally. Language is used not only as a means of sharing ideas, but also as a way of controlling people and influencing what they think and do. Language use involves making choices about lexis, grammar, register, discourse structure, etc., and these choices are often made for particular reasons. For example, a choice of words may be important Ð an armed group, for instance, might be called ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’ depending on whose side you are on. Similarly, the passive voice, for example, might be used to hide facts or give authority to a statement as in, for instance, ‘Ten million pounds were lost last year.’ (We could ask: ‘Who lost them? Why? How? “Lost” means what?’ and so on.) Register might be used to encourage people to act in certain ways. Advertisements, for example, often use a friendly, familiar tone of voice (‘We care for you’) to make people feel that a product is important to them personally. Discourse structure can also determine what your ‘rights’ are in a conversation – as, for example, in a job interview where only one person might have the ‘right’ to ask questions.

In recent years, this way of looking at language has developed into what is now called ‘critical language analysis’ and, in schools, many teachers now try to raise the students’ awareness of how language is used, so they are not so easily influenced by others. The word ‘critical’, here, does not mean ‘negative’ but ‘careful, thoughtful’. (See also CRITICAL PEDAGOGY.)

Practical ideas

• If you start from the assumption that language use involves making choices, you can ask students ‘Why did they say that?’, ‘Why did they use that word rather than another word?’, ‘Why did they use that tense?’, ‘What are they not saying?’ and so on.
• There are many words in English that are typically only used when talking about women, or about men or about children, and this may affect the way we think about people. For example, ‘gossip’ is typically associated with women, while men might ‘talk’. You can give the students a list of words and ask them to categorise them and then discuss why they have categorised them that way. For example, they could try to categorise the following words into ‘About women’, ‘About men’, ‘About boys’, ‘About girls’: beautiful, strong, trustworthy, silly, pretty, mature, gossip, weak, handsome, rough, ambitious. If they put some words in two or more categories, you can discuss how the word changes its meaning.
• You can encourage students to think about statements about things and ask if they are ‘negative’, ‘positive’ or ‘neutral’.
• If the students read a news story, you can ask how the story would change if someone else was reporting it. For example, if the story is about a strike in a factory, how would the story change if the strikers reported it, or the employers, or the government, or customers?
• You can encourage students to think about what the writer thinks about the reader. For example, if you look at an advertisement, what type of people is it appealing to? Does the advertisement suggest (even implicitly) that certain things are desirable? How does the advertisement do this?
• If there are words in English in public places in your country or if English is creeping into the students’ mother tongue, you could ask students to consider why, in each case, English is used. Some writers talk about ‘linguistic imperialism’ to describe how English is entering into other languages.
• You can ask students to think about mother tongue language use too: which words are used mainly by young people? Which words are more ‘official’? Can they think of any English equivalents?
• You can ask the students to look at the conversations in theOut and about sections and to choose one of the characters. If that character changed to, for example, ‘head teacher’ how would the language change?