Kerri Koch
CEJ 552: Adolescent Literature
Two Week Unit Plan
Professor Dunn
November 29, 2004
Long-term Objectives:
Alfie Kohn once asked an audience in the English teaching community if they were teachers of literature or teachers of students. I am a teacher of students. I will continually ask myself what my students will remember from my class ten years from when they were sitting in my classroom. I will use personal memories of what I remember from high school English classes, as well as listening to my colleagues about what works in their classrooms to continually better my teaching. I not only want my students to love reading and writing, but I want them to have the intrinsic desire to do both. I want my students to be independent thinkers. English Language Arts is about so much more than just literature; it is about the world. I want my students to use my class as an open forum for discussing and questioning the world in which they live and the literature they read. I will be apart of the class, not the head of the class. What I want my students to remember about my class is that they were able to be themselves and able to speak their minds. I will not be a teacher who lectures and wants the “right” answers from her students. I believe that in literature and the world there is no one right answer. Students in my class will become literate in multiple modes of interpretation. They will be asked to become visual learners, as well as textual learners. They will be asked to make comparisons to the world and media in reference to the texts they are reading. My students will make their own decisions about how the class will be run. They will learn about rhetorical situations in writing. They will become aware of the difficult situations in the world of school and their community. I will bring my students into the controversies surrounding grammar, language, and literature. They will speak, listen, read, and write to become critical thinkers. Most of all they will leave my class having read print and nonprint texts and will have questioned those texts to enlighten themselves, their classmates, and me.
Objectives for this
unit plan:
I chose to do a unit on short stories because of some personal experiences in high school English classes. For many teachers, high school English class is where they thrived. They loved to read, and they loved the classics. I was not one of those students; I hated to read and most of the time I rented the movie instead of reading the book. That is until I took a class on short stories in eleventh grade. I loved that I could read them so quickly and still understand them. I chose to base the unit on not only short stories and their elements, but on young adult short stories. There are so many issues that teens face that are never talked about because of teachers fear to discuss taboo issues in school. Don Gallo wrote an article for English Journal entitled, “How Classics Create an Aliterate Society” which described many students who could not understand why they were reading about things that had no relation to their lives. He stated that he “relied on the teacher to tell [him] what [the stories that he was reading in high school] meant.” This article inspired me to take a unit on short stories and make it a unit about discussing the issues faced by my students outside of school. My objective for this plan is for students to read, critique, and interpret a variety of short stories. They will watch a movie and make movie posters of a short story of their choice to tap into visual literacy. Students will use graphic organizers, group discussions, and writing to understand the stories they are reading better. Students will present to the class their movie poster and an explanation of the poster, the issue, and the story.
Time unit:
This plan addresses two consecutive weeks of 40 minute classes; it is near the end
of the school year.
Context:
This plan is for a tenth grade English class in Upstate New York. The class is primarily composed of white students, whom are all native English speakers and are dispersed across many different levels of achievement. The school is small and the class has only 18 students. The room is bright because of the many windows that look out at the courtyard. There is a rug on the floor and posters on the wall to add to the atmosphere. The desks, including the teachers, are in a circle in the middle of the room. The walls in the back of the room are filled with bookshelves and books. Everyone knows everyone’s name and the atmosphere is comfortable.
Materials,
Activities, and Methods:
Week One:
Day 1-
Materials:
Objectives:
Students will learn the elements of a short story, and they will think critically about difficult issues facing teens in today’s society using group work.
Activities and Methods:
The first day of this unit will include a 10 minute lecture about short stories. Handout (# 1) will accompany the lecture on the elements of short stories. Students will be asked to take the first 5 minutes of class to look over the packet, and then I will go through and explain some of the key elements of short stories. Ann Charter in The Story and Its Writer defines the success for all fiction by “how true it is to our emotions [and] how accurately it reflects the life we all live” (3), and I will explain to the students that all of the short stories in the packet (# 2), they will be receiving at the end of today’s class, reflect real issues faced by adolescents in today’s world. For the remainder of the class (15 minutes) the students will be broken into six groups of three and will be asked to make a list of issues they face as teenagers. They will be encouraged to list personal experiences as well as things their friends may be experiencing. They will be asked to have a minimum of ten issues, but are encouraged to come up with more than ten. At the end of class I will collect the lists and tell the students that we will discuss them again tomorrow. I will hand out the packet of short stories. For homework students will read the first story in the packet The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. I will remind them that they must take notes in the margin of the packet (this is my way of seeing if they actually did the reading and helps them remember what the story was about). I will explain that this story does not reflect the issues faced by teens, but that we will be using it as a practice story. We will look at the elements of the story, answer questions about the story, and watch a movie about the story.
Day Two-
Materials:
Objectives:
Students will think critically about a number of issues facing teens in society. They will use group work and talk in depth about the issue and why it is important to discuss it. Students will answer and discuss questions about the story The Happy Prince using the knowledge gained from yesterday’s class about the elements of short stories. The discussion will include an introduction into reader response theory.
Materials and Methods:
Before students arrive for today’s class, I will list the ten most popular answers of the issues faced by teens on the board. For the first fifteen minutes of class, the students will be put back into their groups from the previous day and will be asked to choose three of the issues from the board and talk about them for five minutes a piece. They will be asked to think about television shows that discuss the issue, a piece of literature that they read in another class that talked about the issue, and personal stories about the issues in reference to them or their friends. I want them to think critically about the issues before reading the stories, because some of the stories are about issues that may be new to some students. I want them to realize that even if the stories are disturbing to them they are faced by other teens. There is a question of entry that I am going for by choosing stories about teenagers faced with difficult situations. I want students to have an intrinsic desire to read, and if they are given stories about situations they may be going through they are more likely to pick up the story and read it. Also, I chose to this plan using short stories because it allows for more discussion time in class. The point of this unit is to allow students to interact with one another using stories, media, and creative projects as a point of entry into the larger issues of society. After they are done talking about the issues, they will be encouraged to share some of their thoughts. If no one is willing to participate I will offer to discuss what some of the groups talked about because I will have been walking around during their discussions (5 minutes). Students will stay in their groups and be asked to fill out the worksheet (# 3) I will hand out about The Happy Prince. They will use the knowledge gained in yesterday’s lecture about the elements of a short story and reader response to answer the questions. Before they start I will talk for about five minutes referencing handout # 1, about reader response. They will use activity # 5 from Appleman’s appendix to educate themselves about reader response (this will be apart of the worksheet I gave them). I never thought that I would discuss literary theory, but I now realize that there is a place for theory in high school classrooms. I will tell them that there are many theories out there and that I still do not fully understand them, but that the next unit of the class will focus on theory so I thought I would introduce it now as a warm up activity. For the remainder of the class, the students will fill out the worksheets in their groups. For homework they will fill out a graphic organizer on the story The Happy Prince. I will give them blank graphic organizers (# 4) to work from.
Day Three-
Materials:
Objectives:
Students will use the movie to interpret visual modes of The Happy Prince. They will fill out graphic organizers about the movie and then compare and contrast the graphic organizer from the story. They will correlate the elements of the short story to the elements of the movie. This lesson is apart of the visual literacy lesson that will happen in a few days. It is a way of scaffolding the lesson to teach visual literacy using the movie and then the movie posters they are going to create later in the lesson.
Activities and Methods:
Today students will be watching a video. The Happy Prince was made into a movie in 1974. It is only twenty five minutes long, and stars Glynis Johns as the Swallow and Christopher Plummer as the Statue. Students will be asked to fill in another graphic organizer, the same one from last night’s homework (# 4). For the remainder of the class we will discuss as a group the differences in the movie and the story. Some of the questions I will ask are: What are the differences between the movie and the story? What are the similarities? When I said we were watching the movie of The Happy Prince did you think it would be that short? Did you like the movie or the story better? Why? These are just some suggestions of questions, but I am willing to take the discussion anywhere the students want to take it. One of the things I would like students to come away from this discussion is that the story and the movie use the same elements to convey the ideas of Wilde. Tonight they will have no homework, although I will remind them to bring their packet of short stories to class.
Day Four-
Materials:
· Handout of discussion questions for Winnie and Tommy
Objectives:
Students will learn about me when I tell them the reasons for reading short stories in the classroom, adding to the atmosphere of the class. They will also read and answer the questions about the story Winnie and Tommy alone. This is allows them to read and interpret at their own pace. I also want today to be about self reflection of the issues we have been talking about in class. They just learned about reader response and now can apply the theory to this story and really internalize the issues.
Activities and Methods:
I will start the class by reminding the students about the list of issues facing teens that they came up with. Then I will talk about my experience with short stories. I will tell students about my high school experiences with reading and writing. I hated reading, but I loved writing. Anytime there was a novel that I had to read, I went to Blockbuster and rented it. That was until I took an American Short Story class in 11th grade. Juniors or seniors could take a half-year course instead of normal English. Short stories appealed to me, because I could read them quickly. I will explain that short stories allow teachers to bring in many supplement activities to enhance their readings. That is one of the reasons they are reading these stories, to hopefully allow students who hate to read an enjoyable experience in English class (10 minutes). For the remaining 30 minutes of class, students will read the second story in the packet, Winnie and Tommy by Francesca Lia Block. I will explain that this story comes from a collection of stories about teens coming out of the closet. I realize that the issue of homosexuality is touchy to teach in a classroom, but if I had to explain myself to parents or administrators I would use the argument that in every classroom statistically there will be one to two students who are confused about their sexuality. I would hope that homosexuality was one of the issues the students came up with when they made their lists, but if it was not I will explain that it would be on my list for many different reasons. Everyone knows at least one person who is gay or confused whether they know it or not, and it is an issue that is often ignored in classrooms. Students will be asked to read the story silently and if they do not finish they must read the remainder for homework. They will also answer the questions on the worksheet (# 5) that I hand to them for homework.
Day Five-
Objectives:
Students will use self reflection of the issues to choose a story, read it, and then teach the class. Students will learn more about the story through teaching it. They will use group work to help each other out when standing in front of the class. I truly believe that we need to prepare our students to speak to large groups, because it was something that my high school teachers lacked. Also, by talking and teaching they will gain knowledge from their peers that I could not give them, because I am not a teenager going through the issues.
Activities and Methods:
Students will get into 3 groups of 6and choose a story from the packet. They will be able to choose any story they want to that we have not already read. They need to come to a consensus as a group as to which story will read. Once they have picked their story, I will leave it up to them as how to choose, I will ask them to come and tell me. I am hoping that the three groups choose different stories to read, because they will be teaching the story to the class the next time we meet. Once the three stories have been decided, I will assign those three stories for homework over the weekend. Also for homework students will be asked to come up with five questions each about the story they have chosen. On Monday, they will present these questions to the class.
Week Two:
Day One-
Objectives:
Students will build self confidence to speak to their peers about the stories and issues. The class is about them not me, and this activity really exemplifies that. They will learn how to teach a story and better understand it through this activity.
Activities and Methods:
Today the three groups will have about ten minutes at the beginning of class to choose the questions they will present to the class. By this time everyone in class will have read the stories, so the presenters will ask the students in the class to answer the questions they pose. Each group will have ten minutes to ask their questions and get responses. I will chime in, if necessary, to answer the questions posed or guide the students to discuss the stories. The purpose of this exercise is to get students comfortable with talking to a large group of peers. Teachers constantly learn from their students, and students learn from teaching the stories. For homework, the students will read the remaining stories in the packet that they have not read. There should only be four stories to read if everyone has kept up with their reading.
Day Two-
Materials:
· Handout of the movie poster of The Breakfast Club
Objectives:
Students will learn more about visual literacy. They will switch modes of interpretation and try to analyze the movie poster. This activity also is an example of what they will be doing for their final projects.
Activities and Methods:
Today students will be introduced to visual literacy. I will hand out a picture (# 6) of the poster that was used to promote the movie The Breakfast Club. I will ask students to pick a partner and talk about the picture. What do they see? What words are on the poster? What do you think the movie was about? This activity ties into the questions they answered about the movie The Happy Prince. They will learn that you can interpret pictures in the same way that you interpret short stories. This activity will help them in their final projects for this unit. This discussion will take up about half of the class (20 minutes). They will be asked the make a movie poster as their final project for the unit. They will be allowed to choose any of the short stories we have read during the unit, except for The Happy Prince. They will use The Breakfast Club poster as a guide to making their own posters. They will be encouraged to use a tagline, just as the poster does, but no other words. The poster is meant to tap into students’ visual literacy. On the last day of this unit they will present their posters to the class with a short paragraph explaining the poster. Students will be asked to be working on these projects for the next two days. They also must somehow relate the poster to the issue faced by teens the story provokes. The only other homework students have tonight is to remember there short story packets for tomorrow.
Day Three-
Materials:
· Handout of discussion questions for the remaining stories in the packet
Objectives:
Today every student will be forced to speak about the remaining stories. They will be able to think independently about what they want to discuss, but everyone must participate. This is a way for me to make sure that everyone has read the stories; as well it serves as a day for students to ask any questions they might have about the stories.
Activities and Methods:
Today the desks will be formed in a circle when students come to class. We will be having a marathon discussion about all the stories in the packet. There are a total of seven stories, minus The Happy Prince and Winnie and Tommy, in the packet. That means we can spend a total of about five minutes on each story. I will handout discussion questions (# 7) for each of the stories for the students to reference and remember the stories. They do not necessarily have to answer the questions they are meant just as a reference point. Every student in the class will talk today. I never want people to feel like they do not have something to contribute to the discussion, because I feel that with stories of this nature everyone has something to say. We start to the left of me in the circle and everyone will say something about every story. They can talk about the elements of the short story, the way they would visually represent the story, questions they have about the story, the issue the story represents for teens, and many other possibilities. The point of this exercise is to make everyone in the class have a voice and to discuss the stories we did not get to discuss through out the unit. When the discussion gets back to me, we will move to the next story. This will take up the entire class. For homework, students will be asked to choose an issue and write a short story about it. The stories are meant to be creative and will be graded as such. The only criterion for the story is that it is proofread, three to five pages in length, and discusses an issue faced by teenagers. The stories will be bound in a collection that will be put in my classroom library for students in the future to look at.
Day Four-
Objectives:
Students will learn to be readers of classmates’ stories. They will use their previously learned proofreading techniques to read their partner’s story. They will fill in the blank with phrases I write on the board to critique and enhance their partner’s story.
Activities and Methods:
Today students will pick a partner and read each other’s stories. They will be writing a critique of their partner’s story including the phrases: I like the way you…., I want you to talk more about…, I think you need to think more about the rhetorical situation of having this bound in a collection for future students regarding the part where you…, and anything else they might want to add. As well, they need to tell their partner whether or not they proofread the story to the best of their ability or if they need to go back in and proofread again. Each student will have ten minutes to critique their partner’s story. Then for ten minutes the partners will talk about their comments to one another. For the last ten minutes of class, the students will be able to work on their stories alone. I will be available to answer questions about the assignment or the critique during this time. For homework, they will finish their posters and have a final draft of their story to hand in.
Day Five-
Objectives:
Students will use everything that they learned during this unit to present their posters to the class. They will have learned about visual literacy and about the elements of a short story. Most importantly, they have learned that many of the difficult issues faced by teenagers today are portrayed in short stories and should be discussed. They will take this knowledge, internalize it, and share it with the class.
Activities and Methods:
Today students will be presenting their posters to the class. They will hand in the poster and the paragraph explaining the poster. Because there are eighteen students in the class each student will only have two minutes a piece for their presentations. The purpose of this activity is again to build the confidence to speak in front of peers, but also to use the visual literacy skills they gained by drawing the posters in verbally explaining the issue the story represents to them. What I hope the class gets from this activity is that there are many different issues faced by teens today. English is not only about literature, it is also about the world in which we live. By combining the two I am giving the students literature as well as a new way to look at the world.
Assessment or Evaluation:
I will use many modes of assessment
for this unit plan. I will be assessing
the creative story they wrote. I will be
assessing the posters they made. I will
be assessing the presentations. And
finally, I will be assessing the discussions and group work. They will get three grades for this
unit. The first will be class
participation. If they used the groups
to benefit their understanding of the stories and contributed during class
discussions they will receive an A for this part of the grade. I will also grade their short stories. They had to address an issue facing teens
today, and it had to be three to five pages long. Points will be taken off if there is an
indication of the student not proofreading the story.
The third grade will be for the poster and presentation. If the student visually represented a story
and an issue and was able to explain these two things in front of the class
their grade will reflect this. The more
thought and time that was put into the poster, the better the grade.
Reflection:
I would hope that the reflection of this unit plan would include ways to both change and improve it for future use. If all of my objectives for this plan were not met and students did not learn what I intended them to learn, while still getting enjoyment out of the lesson, I will change the plan accordingly. Also, I was worried about the amount of time spent on each lesson, so if the timing was off when I taught the lesson I would like the change the amount of time for each activity or the unit as a whole.
References Used For
This Unit Plan:
Appleman, Deborah. English
Encounters in High School English: Teaching
Literary Theory to Adolescents. New York: Teachers College Press, 2000.
Bauer, Marion Dane, ed. Am I Blue: Coming Out From the Silence. New York:
HarperCollins Pub., 1994.
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston:
Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 1999.
Gallo, Don. “How Classics Create an Aliterate Society.” English Journal. January
2001. 33-39.
Gallo, Don, ed. Sixteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young. New York:
Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub., 1984.
Kohn, Alfie. Beyond Discipline. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall Inc., 2001.
Murray, Isobel, ed. Oscar Wilde: The Major Works. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Standards Used In
This Unit Plan:
Teacher Candidate
Proficiencies
1. Are knowledgeable in the discipline and pedagogy.
2. Integrate their understanding of human development to design diverse learning experiences that promote intellectual, social, and personal development.
3. Understand and appreciate the impact of linguistic, cultural, and social diversity and create varied learning experiences to accommodate differences.
4. Use multiple instructional strategies creatively to develop learners’ critical thinking, cognitive, and performance skills, and intellectual curiosity.
5. Understand group dynamics and use cooperative learning to enhance individual academic and social learning within diverse communities of learners.
6. Are able to use and integrate technology effectively to enhance their own learning and to design learning experiences to support student learning.
8. Understand and apply multiple modes of assessment to both evaluate learners and to inform and improve instruction.
New York State
Standards
2. Students will read and listen to oral, written, and electronically produced texts and performances from American and world literature; relate texts and performances to their own lives; and develop an understanding of the diverse social, historical, and cultural dimensions the texts and performances represent. As speakers and writers, students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language for self-expression and artistic creation.
4. Students will listen, speak, read, and write for social interaction. Students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language for effective social communication with a wide variety of people. As readers and listeners, they will use the social communications of others to enrich their understanding of people and their views.
NCTE Standards
1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
8. Students use a variety of technological and informational resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes.
(# 3) Discussion Questions for The Happy Prince
The Elements of Short Stories:
What is the theme of the story?
What is the setting of the story?
Who are the characters in the story?
What is the plot or conflict of the story?
Did you like the story? Why or why not?
Reader Response Theory:
Context
(What factors surrounding your reading of the text are influencing your response?)
Reader (your name) -------------------Meaning------------------ Text (The Happy Prince)
(What personal qualities, or events (What textual features
relevant to this particular story, might influence your
might influence your response?) response?)
Now take what you just learned about yourself and your personal reading and make it general…Don’t think about just you, think about teens in general and answer the questions a second time.
(# 5) Discussion Questions for Winnie and Tommy
What is the issue being addressed in the story?
Did either Winnie or Tommy remind you of anyone you know?
Was the friendship between Tommy and Winnie what you would consider a good friendship? Why?
What are the characteristics of a good friendship?
They are called children on the last page of the story do you think they are children or adults (keep in mind they are both 18 years old)?
How would you have reacted if you were in Winnie’s position when Tommy told her he liked boys?
Do you think they are still friends today?
Do you think that Tommy should have told Winnie long before he actually did?
Did you like the story? Why or why not?
(# 7) Discussion Questions for the Remaining Stories in the Packet
Holding
Why do you think the author chose to not tell the reader that Chris was a guy until the end of the story?
Did you know that Willie’s father was gay before that moment?
Paul’s Case
What do you interpret the title to mean?
Paul leaves everything behind to go to New York. Why does he do this?
Videotape
What does the twelve year old girl capture on her video?
Why does she become famous?
May I Have Your
Autograph?
Who is the more typical teenager Wendy or Rosalind?
In many friendships there is a more assertive person accompanied by a less assertive person. Is Wendy the dominant friend or is Rosalind? Why?
Future Tense
Why did
Is this typical of teenagers today?
Do You Want My
Opinion?
Why does John think he is abnormal?
Describe the relationships between Lauren and John and John and his father.
How do these relationships examine the meaning of the story?
In The Heat
Describe Richie’s father. Is he a realistic father?
Think of a memory from your childhood that evokes a memory of one of your parents. What is it?