Amanda Otto
ENGL 7701
7/22/03
Final Exam Project
I have never taught a thematic unit. I wanted to but the colleagues with more authority wanted to stay with what they knew. I went along with the process of teaching short stories for three weeks, poetry for three weeks and a couple of weeks for a novel followed by a few weeks for a play. This was boring and not beneficial for students. I did not know how to make the changes. I knew the basis for using themes for units but I never had any practice putting a unit together.
For this unit, I chose the yearlong theme for tenth graders as “Coming of Age.” I saw over the past year how many changes students went through and how tough growing up was for them because of from family, friends and teachers. I watched students try to fit in when their peers were not accepting. I watched them give in to the pressure and make choices they might one day regret. I use these observations as my reasoning for choosing my sub-themes as peer pressure and making choices.
This unit is designed for tenth graders in technical classes though it could easily be used at any level. Technical classes have no more than eighteen students, which allows me to form close relationships with students. I began to understand that to most of these students, I was not just their teacher I was their friend and mentor. Most did not have parents at home helping them make correct choices. When these students had problems, I was the one they came to for help. I feel good about my role as a mentor in their life, but I am hoping that my role as a teacher can be just as influential.
The ability of a technical student is no different from the ability of college prep and I will argue honors students. The difference is the lack of motivation. One of the few differences between my honors classes and my technical ones is that I am constantly trying to get them interested in the literature. Just because technical students do not want to read and write does not mean they are not capable of it. I think this is a common confusion among other technical teachers. I do not give up on my tech kids. In fact, I find I push myself harder to make a connection with them.
I learned last year and from Transactions with Literature that the best way to motivate students to read is to give them something to which they can relate. Rudine Bishop quotes Louise Rosenblatt in saying, “…transactions between the reader and the text is the work of art created.” (8) I want my students to form these transactions so I have chosen pieces of literature that are more modern and based on issues teenagers are faced with.
When thinking about a novel my students can make a transaction with, I realized it had to contain what technical students are interested in: drugs, guns, sex, fights, friends, and stealing. This is not to say all technical students are involved with these things, I just know that a story or novel containing these elements will catch their attention and hopefully motivate them to read. As the focus for the unit, I chose the novel BAD by Jean Ferris. I felt that having a novel based on descriptive, real life scenarios will help my students realize the choices they make can and will effect their lives. I also want them to see that you can learn from bad choices.
Throughout the reading of this novel, students will be learning the new strategy of visualizing as well as continuing with the strategy of connecting that they had previously learned. BAD contains scenes and issues that need to be discussed as a class for students to fully understand. I will start everyday reading the novel aloud and stopping to discuss as I see needed. After reading a few pages, I will then randomly choose students to read aloud. They have the option to decline if they want since I am fully aware that forcing a student to read aloud will only push them away from reading. As they are reading, students will be keeping a journal of all the connections and visualizations they are making. Richard Beach gives support for using journals by saying, “Through informal writing or discussion, particularly with others, students use their initial reaction, conceptions, or autobiographical connections to lead them to discover novel insights about a text.” (66) The final group project for the novel will be for students to create a scrapbook for Dallas (the protagonist) during her stay in the Girl Rehabilitation Center. The scrapbook will require students to write journal entries from the viewpoint of Dallas, newspaper clippings of her arrest, pictures, and other pieces they wish to add. This will allow me to check students’ comprehension of the novel and understanding of the theme as well as allow for some creativity without giving a test. According to, “Changing the assessment context to reflect a learning orientation rather than a performance orientation helps low efficacious students focus on what they are learning and what they can do.” (183)
I will supplement the novel with short stories dealing with similar issues of peer pressure and making the right choices. I chose to start the unit with the short story “Kitty and Mack: A Love Story” by Walter Dean Myers because the choices the characters have to make about love and the future are blatant. I felt this story would help students fully understand the theme. However, throughout the duration, I have added stories in which students will have to infer to see the choices made such as “Fourth of July” by Robin F. Brancato, “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler, and “Monkeyman” By Walter Dean Myers. Paired with these underlying theme stories are others where the choices made are clearer such as “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, “Confession” by Gloria D. Miklowitz, and “On the Bridge” by Todd Strasser. All short stories, in one way or another, involve an adolescent as the protagonist making choices in their life based on peer pressure that will affect them. I will teach every short story differently. I believe that to keep students interested I need to have a variety of teaching strategies and focus on different reading strategies that Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis suggest. The first week of the unit I will be instructing students how to connect to the texts while, as mentioned before, the second week is about visualizing and the third is questioning. There will be days when I read aloud the entire short story and others when I start reading aloud and randomly choose students to read. I will do the majority of the reading because as Gay Ivey states, “Reading aloud enables students to see the mental process that occurs.” (22) I am familiar with most of my students’ reading ability and I know that they seem to comprehend better when they can read along and listen. I will stop to ask questions about the theme, reading strategies and to check their comprehension using some of suggestions of Aidan Chambers. There will be stories that students will read individually and others when they read aloud in groups; they will have a choice. I want to motivate technical students to read and giving choice, according to Barbara Walker, is one way to facilitate this. “Giving students choice helps them develop a sense of competence and, in turn, self-efficacy. Further, allowing choice in literacy learning increases motivation and engagement.” (177)
As I have mentioned prior, I am going to have students focusing on three different reading strategies throughout the unit: Connecting, visualizing, and questioning. Students will be keeping a journal that shows their understanding of the strategies. I feel that another good way to assess their understanding is to make collages. On every Friday, students will take what they learned about the different strategies related to the short story, poem or novel that they have in their journal. They will go through magazines and find pictures and/or words which convey their connections, visualizations or questions they had. Students will be graded on how well the collage shows the reading strategies. Technical students are visual learners so the more I can involve students in their learning process the more motivated they will be.
Instead of choosing poems that students are unfamiliar with and will not be motivated to read, I have decided to use rap. Students in technical classes are very interested in rap. They listen to it but I do not think they fully understand the meaning behind all the words. Using rap as poetry allows me to show students that their role models are trying to make a point. One of the raps I have chosen is “I Can” by Nas. Students will read the lyrics individually and then we will listen to Nas perform the song. I felt this was a good song to focus on because Nas talks about making choices that will benefit you. Later in the unit, we will also examine Tupac’s “Changes” which also refers to making the right choices. After reading these poems, students will write their own poems based on a choice they made that affected their life either positively or negatively.
Towards the end of the unit, I have incorporated more poetry. This time, however, students will be reading poetry instead of rap. The two poems, “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto are about high school students trying to fit in. While the two songs are about making choices, I wanted these last two to be about peer pressure and what you do to be accepted. Students will read these poems individually, focusing on questioning them since they are a little harder to understand. These two poems are different in structure, which will allow the class to discuss the structure of poetry. In this discussion, I will be able to use bits and pieces of Sidney Poger’s “Exploring Poetry.” Students will then write their own poems about a time they felt or gave peer pressure using any structure they want.
I decided the end the unit using the book Monster by Walter Dean Myers. The novel is from the viewpoint of a boy in jail who is writing a screenplay. I know the novel is not intended to be a play but I think with some creativity and imagination, my students will really benefit. This novel deals with gang related pressure and making the wrong choices. Allowing students to become the character will hopefully allow them to see what it would be like if they ended up in jail. I want to motivate my students while in school but I also want them to make the right choices outside of school.
I have chosen to do independent reading in an unusual way. I have found four novels: Speak, Leaving Fishers, Out of Control, and Give a Boy a Gun that all relate to the theme. The first day of the unit, I will do a short book talk about each book. Students will secretly submit to me a ranking of the books. I will be able to group them according to their preferences and mine. During the independent reading time, students will read their books while keeping a reading journal to be used in literary discussion circles every Monday. Barbara Walker supports discussion circles in saying,
“Collaborative discussions are social processes where students work together to achieve a conceptual goal like interpreting a novel or writing a research paper. As individuals share ideas, group members build on these ideas to create a shared conceptual understanding. Students challenge each other to move beyond facts to higher-level explanations.” (178)
I will collect the journals and sit it on the discussions to assess that they are actually reading. The major assessment will come at the end of the nine days. I feel nine days is enough because these are all short and easy to understand novels. The ABR can be done as the group, in pairs, or individually. I will give them the choice of which project they can do but they will not be allowed to do the same project twice. At the end of the nine days, the groups will switch groups.
This unit is filled with a lot of work for students to do but as Connie Romell Hebert says, “The pace of the lesson can either motivate the students to pay attention, or it can create boredom.” (18) I know most other technical teachers might think I am crazy for thinking my students can do all this work. I do not think they can do it, I know they can. It is just a matter of me motivating and helping to believe in them. I have modified to unit so there will be no outside reading or work required because I know my students forget about school as soon as they leave my class. When the unit is finished, my goal is for students to not only be proficient readers but also have a higher self-esteem because of all they work they accomplished.
QCC’S/AKS’S
AKS 22: Students will listen to, read and identify characteristics of various genres including drama, novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction, technical writing, satire and parody. Throughout the unit, students will be reading short stories and novels based on the theme of making choices. Students will also read and listen to rap and poetry as well as act out a play.
AKS 6: Students will read for a purpose; expect reading to make sense, to answer questions or to stimulate ideas. This will be done through the reading journals and literature discussions.
AKS 8: Students will make and defend inferences and conclusions. Students will make inferences about the characters choices in the short stories where the choices were not very clear. In class discussions, students will be asked to defend their inferences.
AKS 12: Students will evaluate writing relative to student’s own purposes for reading. When focusing on connecting, students will be able to relate the novel or short story to their own lives. They will then see a purpose for reading.
Works Cited
Beach, Richard. "New Directions in Research on Response to Literature." Transactions with Literature. Comp. Edmund J. Farrell, and James R. Squire. Urbana: National Council for Teachers of English, 1990. 65-78.