Week Eight: During Reading Strategies

This week we are working on creating lessons plans using during reading strategies to further understanding in a Multicultural Young Adult novel. I found a few things challenging about writing this lesson plan. I first had difficulty choosing a novel for a 9th- 10th grade Language Arts class because most of the multicultural books I have read deal with serious issues that would not be appropriate for these grade levels. For example, in college I took a class entitled Black Women Writers but most of the novels we read that I considered like Beloved, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and For Colored Girls were centered on heavy issues like rape, murder, and infanticide. I didn’t want to do House on Mango Street because I thought it would be overdone by my classmates. I finally found a graphic novel titled Persepolis which centers on a 10 year old girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is the memoir of author Marjane Satrapi who is the novel’s main character. If you are looking for a new book to read I highly recommend it and if you are skeptical about the value of graphic novels give it a chance! It gives a totally different perspective on Middle Eastern culture and society. It’s also great for students to read because of the negative stereotypes that have become associated with people of Middle Eastern descent since 9/11.

The other issue I had with this lesson plan was the time constraints and balancing strategy with content. I found it difficult to work with a 45 minute class period because there was so much I wanted to cover within this novel. The during reading strategy I chose was character map and I wanted to have the students chart the development of Marji, the main character, as she ages from 10-11 in the beginning of the novel. I found it difficult to balance teaching the strategy with teaching the content of the novel. I wanted to have a good modeling component for the strategy but I also wanted to get into the issues of the novel and how they affect Marji’s development. This was where time was my enemy because I tried to accurately plan out my components so that it could actually be an effective lesson taught in the time allotted. I don’t think I got to discuss as much of the novel as I wanted to but I think that teaching character maps was important for future use in my hypothetical classroom. As the novel progresses Marji grows from 10 to 14 years old and at each age the reader can see how her identity is shaped by not only her parents but the tumultuous environment of Iran. Using the character maps will allow students to see the differences between Marji as she grows up and the development of her character overall.

Week Six: Digital Learning Day

When I initially scanned the blog posts on the NWP website one in particular caught my eye, Digital Learning Day: Collaborative Romeo and Juliet Blogging Community. I can remember reading Romeo and Juliet in my ninth grade English class and I was intrigued to see this teacher's new perspective on the unit using technology. After reading her post I realized the entire unit was based on some form of technology whether it is blogging, tweeting, or using voicestream to record students acting out the play. The unit was done in conjunction with another school that used the same projects so that students could connect with other kids reading the play. The voicestream recordings were shared between the schools which allowed for another level of collaboration and connection.

The idea of a blogging community reminded me of what we are doing right now in our Reading and Adolescent Lit class except this teacher employed it as a substitute for quizzes and had students blog from a characters point of view. In the article the teacher includes one example of a student’s blog as Tybalt which allowed for them to set up a Facebook style profile for the character with the character’s name, picture, hobbies, favorite song, and secrets and fears. I thought this was a very interesting way to get students involved with both the text and the characters’ perspectives. I think the blogging community could also substitute as a form of journal responses if you used it in a different way by having students blog as the character saying what happened during the scene or act they read in class.

                I really enjoyed reading this blog post and I thought the teacher had a lot of great ideas for utilizing technology in the classroom. If you don’t get to read the whole post here is an important quote that I took away from reading it, she describes the school that she teaches at, “Technology is not viewed as a separate entity needing a specific time to be etched into the classroom for use, in fact it reminds me a lot of the dichotomy between reading and writing; technology infused curriculum is the norm here, a natural part of pedagogy and student learning.” I think this is where we are heading in the future in terms of bringing technology into the classroom. It will soon be a natural part of teaching and not seen as something that we need to try to incorporate.