180 Degree Classroom After reading the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, 11th grade On-Level English students in a co-taught inclusion class wrote their personal inferences and impressions based on certain passages. I culled those inferences and impressions for workable ideas and the next day we worked in groups to find and record the textual evidence to support our initial inferences and impressions. Afterward, students wrote well-developed analytical paragraphs utilizing the work done by the groups. Following the class reading and analysis of the book, students participated in a video conference with Jonathan Safran Foer during which they were able to ask questions and engage personally with a writer whose book they had read.
Online Discussion about Text Creating an online discussion group is one way to foster discussion even among students uncomfortable with speaking in class. On this forum, IB Magnet English 9 students are responding to either Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture or Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Many of them are making connections between the texts.
Following this discussion, students turned in a personal reflection about their reading and their semester in English class. It was the last writing assignment of the year.
Images of Grendel in Beowulf After their reading of Beowulf, students were tasked with creating a "mask" of Grendel's face. Since there is no explicit description of the monster in the text, students were required to collect details and then to justify the choices they made in the creation of the mask. The masks were created out of clay, fired by the ceramics teacher, and then painted with the students' choice of media: shoe polish, tempera paints or low-fire glazes. Students who had never experienced the art of clay were able to experience it here.
Critical Thinking & Digging in to Text In the process of reading the memoir Chinese Cinderella, students in my 8th grade Advanced English class worked in groups to identify the most significant event in the life of the main character, then to narrow down the sentence(s) that best represent the significance of the experience, and then to explicate that sentence on a poster. My feedback for each group is on the board beside the work.
Interviewing and Interacting African-American residents at a local retirement village planned to publish a book about their experiences and lives, and they were looking for students who would be willing to write their stories. I developed lessons about different kinds of interviews, briefed them in appropriate dress and behavior, and brought my 11th grade On-Level students to participate in this project. The process engaged them in the lives of community elders, immersed them in writing process, and enriched their understanding of American history. At the end of the year, the retired group sent a few copies of their publication with our student's work inside. Several students commented that seeing their work in print was one of the most exciting days of their lives.
Analyzing Character Students are often asked to characterize the people they meet in text. In order to do that, they must first examine the details of that character and then apply what they know from their own experience with human nature to those details in order to draw conclusions. This exercise allows students to see the connections between all of these things: