I’ve noticed that I focus a lot of my blog on topics related to teaching, but not exactly my classroom and experiences. This is obviously something that needs to be remedied. If I am claiming that this blog is meant to help me reflect and become a better teacher, I need to start focusing on what matters, my teaching. First though, my school schedule consists of forty-six minute periods and I teach three periods of World Literature in the morning and two periods of English Techniques in the afternoon. On Friday’s we have a half day and classes last twenty-seven minutes. Just a little time context. These are my current plans for this quarter.
World Literature
In my World Literature class we are reading about African Literature from our World Literature text book. I try to change up how much we use the text book and how much we read from a novel. Since I have no novels in our school collection by African authors about Africa and its culture and traditions, I decided to stick with the text book. Even though a good portion of my class is African American, they lack the history and understanding of the African culture. As we do readings, I give students a notes packet that they fill out as we read. I’ve noticed that my students lack the skills for note taking, so I provide them a sheet that points out major themes, ideas, and vocabulary for them to focus. As we move through different readings, the packet will be less informative in that they have to provide the majority of the information. It also helps me to keep track of what notes they’ve taken for quizzes. With each reading students will focus on how they can connect it with their own lives. This will lead to an essay/ art project where they reflect on one particular story that they connected with the most.
The second half of the quarter, we will be focusing on short stories/mysteries written by Latin American writers. This not only covers another culture, but another genre that students have not really read before. We will also watch a Latin American psychological thriller, more than likely “Open Your Eyes”. Then we would have the discussion about the impact of this genre has on the Latin American community and then the world as a whole. More than likely students will have the choice between writing their own mystery or an essay analyzing the genre as a whole.
English Techniques
My English Techniques class is a reading comprehension course in order for students to boost up their STAR scores. The STAR test is a computer adaptive test that assesses the students “Word Knowledge and Skills, Comprehension Strategies and Constructing Meaning, Analyzing Literary Text, Understanding Author’s Craft, and Analyzing Argument and Evaluating Text”. I treat it as an introduction to literature course. We cover all forms of literature. This first half of third quarter we are focusing on literary nonfiction (biographies and autobiographies). Students will have reading packets with overviews of each type of literary non-fiction and we will read excerpts from popular novels, such as Michelle Obama’s “Becoming”. Students will use the skills and techniques they’ve read to write a section of their own autobiographies as their final.
The second half of the quarter students will work on analyzing Persuasive Texts. Students will be continuing to read an look at non-fiction text but in the form of those that are trying to persuade others in one form or another. Students will look at Ads, Blogs, Reviews, Commentaries, and Editorials. Each week there will be a focus packet on one of the categories listed. Students will also view commercial ads, especially Super Bowl made ones since that is a high advertisement time. For their final students will have to create an assignment to persuade me and/or classmates into buying or believing something they are passionate about.
I can’t wait to see how my students react to the work we will be doing together this quarter. Hope to follow up before mid quarter grades.
Ms. V's Learning Journey 