This is the central question I used for my Romeo and Juliet novel. We did many activities to explore this idea and form opinions about what the play was really about. One of the things I did to get my students thinking about this question was to make an eye catching display! I made a broken heart to symbolize the two arguments about the play, and hung up evidence and support for both sides. I used quotes from the play, as well as some contemporary arguments that the students could connect with ( someecards, you are great!) Below are photos of my display at the beginning of the unit. I had the students come up with quotes from the play to support both sides and we added them as we went! Steal this idea for your class to get them motivated!
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I'm back! I've been MIA since the school year is wrapping up and I had major piles of grading to do. My newest unit this year was on Arthur Miller's Play, "The Crucible". I taught this with my honors students so I wanted to go in depth with them and study the time period that the play was written in. We did some research on communism and the red scare, and at the end we watched the film " Good Night and Good Luck". This film worked well to get the students to see what was happening in their own country not too long ago. I had them make connections between characters in the Crucible and characters in the film. Here is the worksheet I used to get them to brainstorm! Feel free to use it in your class. Happy teaching! How in the world do you get students to care about a story that is over 500 years old? They think the 90's are light-years away! One new tactic I'm going to try with my 9th graders this year is some Romeo and Juliet inspired pick up lines. I'm going to hold a contest in each class for students to find the most romantic and lovey dovey language in the play and deliver their lines in front of the class. Students will get to rank the pick up lines from " Drink in the face", to "I'd give him a fake number", " I'd text him", "one date max" , "Totally date-able" , " Future soul mate" , to " I'd kill myself if I had to live without them". ( See what I did with that last one... :) ) Now, high school students can be a little embarrassed to have to confess undying love to one another in front of the classroom, however, I have come up with an idea to do away with this peer pressure. My students will be delivering their pickup lines to some very beautiful celebrities that can be found in this powerpoint! I'm planning on projecting the images on the board, and letting the students try their lines out on a celebrity crush! I think this will lighten the mood, and make the students a little more comfortable sharing their pick-up lines. However, its not all fun and games. Being the sneaky teacher that I am I have disguised some learning and common core standards within this "fun" lesson. Each student is going to have to find three pick up lines, deliver them as they are written, but also translate them into their own words. They will then have to analyse the lines they have chosen and explain how and why these words convey love and attraction. If said, how would they sway someone to pursue a romantic relationship? They must also identify who is saying the line, and why. I'm hoping this goes well and I will update after it all goes down! My honors class has just finished reading night, and we are moving on to a literature unit focusing on novel dealing with genocide. In order to get my students ready to see the similarities most genocides have in common, I wanted them to reference something they already knew a lot about; the Holocaust. I used this worksheet to introduce my students to the 8 stages of genocide, and had them provide examples from Night and our other Holocaust readings to get them to synthesize the information. ( Blooms word! extra credit point for me!) Here is the worksheet I used. I found the information online and take no credit for the work done defining the 8 stages.
Hope this helps my fellow Night teachers out there! Im about to start teaching "The Freedom Writers Diary" again with my English 101 students. One of my biggest challenges with my students is that they are from a small town and don't have the prior knowledge to fully understand the everyday troubles of the students they will soon be reading about. Additionally, the book is set in the 90s, about a billion years in the past in my students' minds. So.... to deal with this issue, I've decided to create a reading soundtrack for my students first reading day with the novel. My plan is to play 90s hip hop and rap songs (CLEAN VERSIONS ONLY!) for my students who might not know who Dr Dre is or who 2pac is. When you watch a movie, what helps you figure out the mood and the setting of the story? The music! I'm going to play music in the background of my students reading in hopes of helping them visualize, feel, and create the setting of the novel, and to get the tone of the time. Maybe it will be like subliminal messaging, or maybe it will flop. But I think it's worth a shot! Here are links to youtube videos of the songs I'm planning on playing so far. I;m not going to show the video, but youtube was the easiest way for me to find clean versions of the songs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5XPV5mDm3g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWwdeypwNOg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDdIKSA54eY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUB86wHz658 (California love) Enjoy! I'm about to start teaching one of the novels that had a big impact on me when I first read it in high school. Night, a holocaust survivor's story, is a book that I think is a must read for all high school students. I want this book to mean something to my students. One way to get them to connect with it is to ease some of the confusion that will come with figuring out where it is set, where the narrator travels, and where he ends up. I found this AMAZING interactive map that gives readers a great visual of the forced journey the author makes, and just how far from home he ends up. You can find it here. More posts to come on teaching this novel! I recently started teaching the novel Speak with my honors students. We are focusing a lot this year on finding textual evidence to support ideas and claims. But honestly, it can get a little tedious to simply ask my students to look up quote after quote after quote. So, I decided to get a little creative with finding textual evidence and address a serious issue brought up by the novel at the same time! The main character in the novel, Melinda, is suffering from depression. The author makes the conscious choice to characterize her with different signs and symptoms of depression. I decide to make my students "doctors" for the day, and have them prove to me that she could indeed be diagnosed with depression. I found a website that listed the signs and symptoms, listen them, and made a sheet for my students to write their "observations" of Melinda. They had to find a quote to correspond with all the symptoms. They did a great job! We found textual evidence of all of the signs and symptoms of depression. This activity lead us into a discussion about teen depression where we looked at facts and stats about depression in teens. We talked about who to speak with if you think you need help, and what kinds of things you can do to treat depression. Below is a file with my worksheet, and a link to a site with information about teen depression. I hope this lesson is helpful and enjoyable! http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_teen.htm
I am a big advocate of using as many visuals as possible to help my students understand ideas and stories in as many ways as they can. Because of this, I like to show films that have the same themes as the novels we are reading at the end of each unit. I often have my students compare themes, or messages between the novel and the film. For TKAM I like to show The Help and have students discuss if America made any progress in the 30 years between the settings of both stories. ( the answer is usually a resounding no) For the Great Gatsby, when I was student teaching, I showed GATTACA. This was a great way to get students to question if Gatsby was really after Daisy, was it a love story, or was he after something more elusive. For The Freedom Writers Diary I have shown the film version, but have also shown Stand and Deliver, as it covers the same type of students and prejudice seen in the novel. I think its eye opening for my students to see the mistreatment of kids their age. This year I'm teaching Speak for the first time and can't decide what film I'd like to show with this novel. At first I was thinking Mean Girls, to add to the discussion of fitting in and cliques. Also my students will be reading excerpts from Queen Bees and Wanna-bes, the novel Mean Girls is based off of. But I was flipping through channels today and came across The Breakfast Club. I know for a fact most of my students have not seen this movie and it also deals with the same themes as Speak: crazy teachers, group dynamics, teen issues and so on. I'm so torn! I can't decide what to do, but I think I'm going to make assignments to go with both movies and see what has the most teaching potential. If you have any movie suggestions let me know in the comment section! Additional movie novel pairings: Night - Hotel Rwanda Night- Scindler's List The Sun Also Rises- Midnight in Paris To Kill A Mockingbird- A Time To Kill - language warning! To Kill A Mockingbird- The Secret Life of Bees The Crucible- X-men Speak- Easy A Speak- The Pregnancy Project The Scarlet Letter- Easy A Freedom Writers Diary- Sister Act (Two..I think....) Montana 1948- A River Runs Through It I'll add more as I think of them! Suggestions welcome! Below is an amazing video for anyone discussion the Civil Rights Movement and looking to link it to the Gay Rights debate that is the hot topic of today. What an amazing way to link the two together! Make sure you watch the compelte video to see the teaching point. I really hope that I will be able to find a way to incorperate this into my classroom as we study To Kill A Mockingbird and the Civil Rights movement. We have already had a discussion about how sometimes the bible or other texts of faith can be bent and misinterpreted to support ideas that they necessarilly dont support. And, as Miss. Maudie from TKAM sayd "A Bible in one mans hand can be as dengerous as a drink in, oh, oh... your fathers!" Here is a link to the web search activity I mentioned in the post below!
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AuthorSecond year teacher who is always looking for ways to make learning interesting. Archives
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