Hope this helps my fellow Night teachers out there!
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!
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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! Here is a look at the powerpoint I create for my honors students to view before we start reading the novel "Night". I wanted to give them some prior knowledge to refer to as they read the novel, and as they read about all of the camps that the author is taken to. It's often confusing to visualize the story since it changes settings again and again. I'm hoping viewing these pictures before and during reading will help my students really get a good feel and a deeper understanding of what exactly the author is going through. Especially since my students have not had a very good WWII and Holocaust education. I found all of these images online and take no credit for them.
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 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! Here is a link to the web search activity I mentioned in the post below!
I was reading this funny blog, purely for entertainment, and teaching inspiration hit me! ( I just cant turn off teacher mode!) This article gave me the coolest idea to use in my classroom. It has business cards for fictional characters should they ever open a business. My personal favorite is Voldemort, however it's totally (and sadly) not classroom appropriate. But some of these cards really get into the essence of they character they supposedly belong to. Hello! Great characterization practice! This would be such a fun and creative way for students to demonstrate they knowledge of who a character really is. It would be really cool if we could design them and get them made, but for now, I think I'll create a simple template for kids to fill out. I already have some creative activities for getting into character for my units (tweets for TKAM, post secret submissions for Freedom Writers...) but I'm dying to do this in class this year. Maybe I'll hold out and use it at the end of the year for Romeo and Juliet... When I make my template for my students ill be sure to post it here for all to use!
link:http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_449_29-business-cards-famous-fictional-characters_p29/#3 Something that I've really pushed in my classes this year are the 5strategies for reading. I'm constantly asking my students to predict,summarize, chunk, visualize, and .... Visualizing is something that Ihave pushed a lot with any novel or text that my students are working on a natural way to get kids to think and visualize what they are reading is to ask them to draw it. There is tons of research on how drawing is proven to help students learn better and make content more meaningful, blah, blah, blah... I use it as a trick to make learning fun AND force students to think about the text. ( I'm one sneaky teacher, actually I believe most teachers are sneaky! We have to be.)We draw A LOT. Below is example of how I have incorporated drawing/visualization into lessons about many different novels and topics. To Kill A Mockingbird - Drawing The Radley Place I asked my students to draw a picture of the Radley House by using textual evidence from the book. I directed them to specific pages that contained different descriptions of all aspects of the house. Students had to open their books, reread different passages, and then create their drawing. They had to include very specific details, like the color of the house and shutters, items in the front AND back yard, and where the house was located. ( it's down the street from the Finch's and backs up to the school yard) I have the students a list of guideline and the rubric I was going to use to grade them. They had to use color, and it had to show effort and neatness. I know not all kids are artists ( I' m certainly not!) so they had the option to label anything they had a hard time drawing. But some kids ARE artists, and I received beautiful work. I hung the most accurate drawing around the room. Kids didn't even realize that they were using textual evidence to create their drawing ( It's been a huge battle in my room to get kids to believe that textual evidence is a real thing) but they got to enjoy themselves while letting their creative juices flow during class time. |
AuthorSecond year teacher who is always looking for ways to make learning interesting. Archives
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