Breau, H., Cathcart, R., & Dunn-Daye, J. (2009). Student Voices: How Can English Teachers Make Class More “Real” for Students? The English Journal, 98(5), 41-41. Retrieved January 19, 2017, from www.jstor.org/stable/40503295.
This article talks about ways we as teachers can make class more “real” for students but, unfortunately, it does not say anything new or innovative about the subject. Breau et al. simply suggest things like making assignments more active, making projects and writings more relatable to the students, and use more technology in class to make the classroom environment more modern. From my discussions with teachers, both new and more experienced, teachers have been doing this for a while. Also, with the implementation of the new cirriculum, all that Breau et al. discuss is happening implicitly. This article, therefore, does not seem very helpful in my inquiry adventures.
Cantwell, J. (2014, February 19). Constructing Macbeth : Text and Framing in a Secondary Urban Classroom. Changing English, 21(1), 24-31. doi:10.1080/1358684x.2013.875746
Cantwell details a study that took place in an East London high school and the “multimodal nature of the students’ construction of the literary heritage text of Macbeth, specifically in their dramatic reinterpretations of Act 1, scene 7”. Cantwell got her grade 10 class to create dramatic reinterpretations of Act 1.7 (the scene were Lady Macbeth persuades her husband, Macbeth, to kill the king). She emphasizes how Shakespeare, but especially Macbeth, can be taught and understood in many different ways instead of just the traditional, canonical method of teaching shakespeare such as the read this aloud to the class and fill in a worksheet kind of method. That being said, she does not go into much detail about the assignment herself, thus it would be very hard for me to duplicate this assignment in my own Macbeth unit.
Dell’Angelo, T. (2014). Literacy Through Photography for English-Language Learners. Retrieved December 09, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/literacy-through-photography-for-ells-tabitha-dellangelo
This blog post describes ways that teachers can use photography to increase and support literacy. Dell’Angelo lists three ways in which photography supports literacy:
- “It is an excellent way to provide differentiation for English-language learners.
- It relieves pressure from reluctant students or striving readers and writers by providing the opportunity to read and analyze photographs instead of traditional print texts.
- It represents a culturally responsive teaching method as it demonstrates a way to welcome all voices in the classroom to be heard and valued.”
Dell’ Angelo suggests that using “photographs provides a novel way to engage in analyzing text. Students can verbally describe their observations, ideas, and analysis in addition to listening to the ideas of their classmates. The use of photographs allows students to reflect and organize their thoughts in a creative way that cannot be achieved simply through writing”. While this post focuses on mainly English-language learners, I believe that Dell’Angelo’s methods could also engage any kind of student. I plan on doing something similar to this in my practicum to discuss theme and theme statement as scaffolding for thesis statements in literary essays. I will show the class a photograph or a piece of visual art and get them to discuss it, what is the artist emphasizing? What is the main point / focus of the piece? How do we know this? What kind of visual techniques is the artist using to emphasize this? etc. The students would then come up with a theme from the art work, put it in a statement, and then list the supporting evidence. Similar to Dell’Angelo’s methods of photography and literacy and just as engaging.
Earle, J. (2015). Homer Meets High-Tech: Data Visualization and the Classics. Retrieved December 09, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/homer-high-tech-data-visualization-james-earle
In this Edutopia blog-post, Humanities teacher, a Mr. James Earle, found that students were more engaged in the classical literature of Homer when they tracked instances of rage within the narrative of The Illiad and then creating a data visualization (a graphic presentation of data). Students in Mr. Earle’s Humanities class, after first deciding on a theme,made hypothesises about which group of characters would present more rage: gods, Trojans, or Greeks. They then held a contest to figure out a way to manage and organize the data, making the students think of user-friendly data management systems. Next, “[f]or the duration of the project, [they] all shared one Google Spreadsheet where everyone had editing access. The class created a schedule that placed three students in charge of data entry, maintenance, and accuracy each week.” (Earle, 2015) incorporating collaboration and mathematics / statistics into a literary study. After the book was read, the class analyzed the data and wrote persuasive essays using the data as evidence.
What I appreciated about this article and Earle’s experiment is that it is, at its core, very much focused on interdisciplinary collaboration. He has woven the scientific method, quantitative research strategies, and literary analysis all into one unit. This not only allows students to analyze the literature in a fresh way that makes the content leap off the page because you are actively hunting for data, it also engages students who may be more literal and logically or scientifically minded. English is a required academic course, thus, there will always be science and math loving kids who do not like English because of its abstract, metaphorical nature. Earle’s technique allows those reluctant English students to engage in the material as well. This activity lends itself very nicely to introducing critical thinking and inquiry into the classroom as it depends on interpretation of data, you have to decipher as a class what the data means. Earle’s post also provides the teacher-reader with free resources to aid in creating visual data.
Felske, C. K. (2005). Beyond the Page: Students as Actor-Readers. English Journal,95(1), 58. doi:10.2307/30047399
Felske’s article talks about bringing in professional actors to encourage students in the high school English classroom to becoe Actor-Readers. Felske clearly uses a performance pedagogy in her instruction of Shakespeare but was lucky enough to receieve an education grant to bring in a professional Shakespearean actor to assist in the transition from student as passive reader and learner to student as actor-reader. Most of the article focuses on the actor’s interaction and instruction with the students, something that the regular, every day Jane Doe teacher would not be able to implement. We don’t always have the money or connections to implement this kind of instruction in the classroom and grants are not always ready and waiting for us to use. I have connections to professional actors, from my theatre school days, but none answered the Facebook call I sent out when I was developing my unit…as I have no money to pay them with and their schedules being hectic, I did not blame them. Thus, Felske’s article is hard to relate to. This article did give me an idea of getting a production designer friend of mine (also from my theatre school days) to Skype into the classroom to talk about theatrical production design (set, lighting, sound, and costume design) with my students…and when I put out the facebook call he actually responded and said yes despite me not being able to pay him! Because of this, the article was not an entire loss, it did spark an idea that looks promising and exciting, it just has nothing to do with Felske’s main point of the article.
Heick, T. (2013, July 30). What You Need to Be an Innovative Educator. Retrieved December 11, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-you-need-innovative-educator-terry-heick
This article discusses how one would go about becoming and innovative educator without going into why innovation in the classroom is needed. It does discuss the need for getting grants and financial support. I was expecting this article to discuss WHY innovation is needed in the classroom and what innovation looks like but id does neither. If you want to know how to be an innovative teacher with lots of flash, flare, and style this article is for you. If, like me, you just want to know why innovation is needed to maintain student engagement just keep scrolling and look somewhere else.
Lord, K. M. (2014). Theme Comprehension: Beyond the Details. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 50(4), 181-184. doi:10.1080/00228958.2014.960344
This article focuses mainly on elementary education which is not at all my specialty. To summarize the article, the author, Lord, discusses why theme is an important core competency in the English Language Arts curriculum. Lord does a good job explaining why theme is important to school curriculum seeing it as a tool to connect content to the students’ lives. Overall it is a decently adequate article if I were a teacher candidate in the elementary program but, because I am a teacher candidate in the secondary program, I found what Lord discusses over simplistic and below the educational level of my senior secondary students for me to implement into my own instruction during my practicum. That being said, this article might be worth checking out for those who are teaching ELL because it gives great scoffolding tips for discussion theme in very simple ways. It was just too simple for my grade elevens.
Olden, K. (2011, October 25). The Shield of Achilles Project: How I Used Digital Video to Make Classical Lit Relevant. Retrieved December 09, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/shield-of-achilles-kenneth-olden
Kenneth Olden, a high school English teacher, discusses, in this Edutopia article how “[b]y understanding the core values of Greek culture through the lens of the soldier, as seen in The Shield of Achilles, and then demonstrating that connection through personal films, students have personalized the material and developed a deep understanding of The Iliad”. He discusses how he struggled to get his students to understand why they read this old, long poem after all this time. His students were not at all interested and did not or would not work to understand the text. So Olden changed tactics and “challenged [his] students to put themselves in the shoes of these soldiers and ask themselves: What do I value? What would I fight for, even laying down my life? How can I honor the sacrifices others have made for me?” and he says the change was amazing. Olden used Achille’s shield (that depicts his values of peace and protecting the life he annot live) as an impetus of getting students to think about their own personal values. Olden challenged students to create their own “digital” shields using whatever means they wanted and “[t]hey responded to my challenge by creating personal films, crafting digital “shields” that represented what they valued most by using a series of short video clips, still photographs, and inspiring music.”
While Achilles is, unfortunately, not part of our Canadian core curriculum, Olden’s article did help me understand the need for students to make personal connections with the text. Olden suggests that once deep, personal connections were made, it made the students care about the quality of the work and gave them the opportunity to critically experiment and explore different forms of media. He also suggests that by creating personal connections between text and students paid off for the teacher as well as it increased student buy-in, created higher student motivation and, thus, achievement and created a powerful, real-world example of the peom that really hit home. I could definitely see myself incorporating something like this in my practicum where I will be teaching a grade 10 pre-IB english class on poems inspired by Greek mythology.
Rubenstein, G. (2009, May 05). Kids Feel the Power of Poetry in Performance. Retrieved December 09, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/poetry-slam-global-writes
“Kids Feel the Power of Poetry in Performance” is an Edutopia article about using slam poetry to get students involved and engaged in poetry. The article talks about one school’s experience of a non-profit group based out of New York called Global Writes “a nonprofit organization in the Bronx that works with local arts organizations to place professional poets in schools to coteach weekly with classroom instructors. During two 16-week sessions — almost a complete school year — students in grades 4-12 learn to write and deliver spoken-word poetry, preparing for slams with their peers”(Rubenstein, 2009). With Global Writes’ assistance, the class that Rubestein profiles, was able to create such “intensity and vulnerability [through] students’ verse” that “is all the more potent in a place like school, where regimentation is usually the rule” (Rubenstein, 2009). The students became connected emotionally and personally to poetry sparking an enthusiasm in the written word we English teachers would go Macbeth for. The problem I have with this article is not the lesson on lesson content’s connection to the personal lives of the students, it is that the article spends the majority of its time tooting the horn of Global Writes, a resource that most teachers, at least international teachers, cannot get access to because of its location. The article goes on and on about the process and benefits of Global Writes but does not discuss how teachers can implement this kind of work into their lessons to achieve similar results, that I have had to figure out by myself.
Turchi, L., & Thompson, A. (2013). Shakespeare and the Common Core: An Opportunity to Reboot. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(1), 32-37. doi:10.1177/003172171309500106
The article discusses the benefits of using performance pedagogy in the instruction and exploration of Shakespeare in high school English classes. Students, by performing, do their own investigating into the themes of Shakespeare that we consider universal and find thier own meaning, importance, and significance within the text. While the article does a good enough job lying out why a performance pedagogy is important, it does not give teachers any practical or strategies to implement this pedagogy. Thus, it is not too terribly useful for my inquiry.
