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Poem 8: “We Real Cool”

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | American Lit, ReadWriteThink, lesson plan, poetry | No Comments

Another poem I enjoy teaching, Gwendolyn Brooks’s "We Real Cool" has been a powerful tool for discussions of voice and style in the classroom. Like "The Writer," this poem inspired a ReadWriteThink lesson plan, Many Years Later: Responding to Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”

The activity that I describe in the lesson, and also in a related English Journal article, “Write Like You Talk (Snapshots),” demonstrated to me how important it is for students to writing from authentic subject position and in their own voice. (You can find out more by reading the EJ article.)

Okay, I admit though, choosing this poem is probably prideful. It’s a poem I like and that I teach well. Further, it led to my first publication in English Journal. Who wouldn’t be pleased about that? 

But there’s more. I found about a month ago that the Library of Congress’s Web Guide, "Gwendolyn Brooks: Online Resources," points to my lesson plan. Seriously, scroll down to the lesson plan section and there it is. Okay, it’s just a link, but hey, someone at the Library of Congress thought my lesson was good enough to point to. And it’s all because of that great poem by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Poem 7: “The Writer”

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | American Lit, ReadWriteThink, lesson plan, poetry | No Comments

I’ve liked Richard Wilbur’s "The Writer" since I came across it my first year as a teacher. I may have read the poem earlier, but I don’t have any memories of it.

Instead I remember teaching with it. I guess I’m realizing I have a pattern—I like teaching narrative poems. But this poem in particular always seemed perfect for the writing classroom, with it’s metaphor for what it’s like to be a writer and struggle through attempt after attempt at the right word and the most effective phrase.

If you want to see how I used the poem in the classroom, check out my ReadWriteThink lesson plan: Writing about Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment.

ReadWriteThink: Creative Problem-Solving with Ezra Jack Keats

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

Students explore problem-solving in this new ReadWriteThink lesson, which explores the challenges faced by characters in Ezra Jack Keats’ picture books. After reading a variety of Keats’ books, students explore the problems that the characters face and solutions that they choose through classroom discussion, story mapping, and comparison and contrast of several Keats’ books. The lesson was written by Vanessa Udry of Tolono, Illinois.

ReadWriteThink: The Children’s Picture Book Project

Friday, November 3rd, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

In this new ReadWriteThink lesson, students evaluate published children’s picture storybooks. Students then plan, write, illustrate, and publish their own children’s picture books. The lesson was submitted by Junius Wright of Charleston, South Carolina.

ReadWriteThink: Bio-graph: Graphing Life Events

Friday, November 3rd, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

This writing activity integrates mathematical graphing with writing and can be used to generate a number of different kinds of writing activities, but lends itself well to biographical and narrative writing. Students interview other students, choose significant life events, rate them, graph them, and write about one or more. The lesson plan was written by Susan Spangler of Fredonia, New York.

ReadWriteThink: Thinking Inductively: A Close Reading of Seamus Heaney’s “Blackberry Picking”

Thursday, October 12th, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

This ReadWriteThink lesson eases students’ fear of interpreting complex poetry by teaching them an inductive strategy with which they determine patterns of imagery, diction, and figurative language in order to unlock meaning. Although the lesson uses Seamus Heaney’s “Blackberry-Picking,” this strategy can be applied to a variety of poems. The lesson was written by Lane Dye of the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project (KMWP) at Kennesaw State University.

ReadWriteThink: Fair Use Lesson Plan

Monday, March 6th, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

In a moment of inspiration, I wrote a new lesson for the site today. I was searching for resources for Copyright Awareness Week for Inbox, and coming up empty. I hate that copyright is so frequently defined as in terms of plagiarism, and I refused to come up with resources that fall into that way of thinking. To fill the hole in the section, I wrote Campaigning for Fair Use: Public Service Announcements on Copyright Awareness. In the lesson, students explore a range of resources on fair use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements (PSAs), to be broadcast over the school’s public address system. Work can also be published as podcasts on the Internet. Students tap research and persuasive writing strategies as they design announcements for an audience of their peers.

ReadWriteThink: Three Lessons!

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

A content report was due today, so I made a last-minute push to get things online. Finished up the lesson I have been writing for several days now, and edited and posted two others:

From Dr. Seuss to Jonathan Swift: Exploring the History behind the Satire

After exploring the historical allusions behind Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle Book, the whole class discusses the history behind a passage from Gulliver’s Travels. After this group exploration, students research further historical allusions in Swift’s work and share their findings with the class. (This one I wrote)

Alphabiography Project: Totally You

Instead of writing their life stories in a linear fashion, students write their biographies from A to Z in this nontraditional autobiography activity, which was inspired by the book Totally Joe by James Howe. After the entry for each letter in their alphabiographies, students sum up the stories and vignettes by recording the life lessons they learned from the events.

Finding Common Ground: Using Logical, Audience-Specific Arguments

Using a hypothetical situation, students generate arguments from opposing points of view, discover areas of commonality through the use of Venn diagrams, and construct logical, audience-specific arguments in order to persuade their opponents. Students also have an opportunity to role-play with classmates in order to refine their arguments.

ReadWriteThink: Figuring Out Swift and Seuss

Friday, February 24th, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

Forgive me as I freewrite a splat. You see I’m a little stuck on a lesson plan, and I can’t figure out where I want it to go (other than to end up as a perfect piece that I can be happy with).

Okay, the lesson idea: using Dr. Seuss to introduce satirical techniques used by Jonathan Swift. It’s a Dr. Seuss book that I used when I was teaching, The Butter Battle Book, and I found an article that does something similar to what I did. The events in the Dr. Seuss book are compared to the political satire of the Swift’s Big-Endians and Little-Endians. Simple and clear parallels that students can usually see.

My problem is that I can’t tell where the lesson is going. You read both texts and discuss—then what? Do they just discuss? That can’t be enough. And I need to work in an interactive. I could do the simple Venn Diagram or Chart, but I’d really like to come up with something more sophisticated or at least less like a hoop to jump through. I want something that is actually important to the lesson. Not that comparing things in a chart of Venn diagram isn’t important. I just think that I can do better than that.

I think that I need some kind of divine inspiration. I feel like there’s some really cool idea out there that I am just not thinking of for some reason. I could ask students to write their own satirical piece on a current issue, but the lesson is supposed to be an introduction to Gulliver’s Travels. I have nothing against writing satire, but it seems off-topic. Perhaps what would make the most sense would be to work through the historical allusions in the Swift passage that I’m using and then send students off to use similar techniques on another chunk from the text. Hmm. Maybe students are to become experts on certain terms, searching for their historical significance and then explaining those terms to the class as they come up in the reading. Hmm. The class could put together a kind of glossary on the references that Swift is making in his text. So the focus is mostly on research and how Swift uses exaggeration, understatement, and parody to make commentary on society.

If I go with that, I’ll need to make a list of possible terms for students to research and collect Web sites and references that they can consult as they do that research. I could probably use the Travelogue to move them through the sites that include details on the book’s background. Some of the terms would be easier to figure out than others, but it’s likely that a lot are basically defined in their textbooks. They could then go to the library and research the historical references in more detail.

Presentations would be spread through the reading of the book (not all done at the end). Whenever a term is encountered, the student who did the research on that item would provide the background and details. At the end, all students would be expected to piece together all of the ways that Swift satirizes society to draw conclusions about the overall message that the book makes to its readers.

There. That seems like a workable plan. See? Writing and thinking do work together :)

ReadWriteThink: Gender Issues and Comics

Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 | ReadWriteThink | No Comments

The Calvin and Hobbes from 02/23/95 would be a great discussion starter for talk of media and gender. I may revise Comic Makeovers: Examining Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Media, or perhaps I could write up a 6&8211;8 lesson plan that uses it for a similar exploration.