Nonfiction Discussion
When we talked about nonfiction we talked about graphic organizers. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about graphic organizers. I mean they certainly have their uses. I use them now to organize my thoughts or sometimes to draw up a picture for other people. As a student I hated being told to use a graphic organizer. They didn't seem purposeful to me and often filled like busy work. Our discussion reminded me of something that I learned in Dean's class- Graphic organizers are a tool that you want students to have in their tool box. It's good to have students do them at times so that when they want another way to do something they have it. I think using them needs to be scaffolded with the explanation that the student is doing them so they can later use it (or not use it) at their discretion.
Also, in relation to nonfiction, one of my favorite science classes made us find a science article and summarize it every week. I think teaching students to find interesting articles in the news on topics they would like to talk about is a good idea.
Picture Books
It has been a blessing to be at BYU where several of the professors focus on methods for teaching from picture books. Pictures books are such great teaching tools because they cover fiction and nonfiction, they use visuals, they are really short and sometimes quite long, and their use of language is incredible. I loved the picture book that was all about perspectives. I thought that was really cool. Furthermore, I think picture books are a project that students can do in the classroom together as they do "writing to read". I hope to use authors like Tomie DePaola, Patricia Polacco, and Dr. Seuss as works that my students can read and learn language and storytelling from. AH!! That is something I haven't talked about in any journals. I love storytelling. I love people who are effective storytellers. That can only be learned from other people who are good at it. Picture books often have good storytelling elements.
Shakespeare is my homeboy
Oh wait, Cecil is my homeboy :). Either way, Shakespeare is something I've been thinking about a lot. I liked the teaching ideas were fun. I think the biggest problem with Shakespeare has less to do with effective activities and more with sufficient time and scaffolding. Fun projects are great for for student's learning and retention, but only after they understand the story. Jordan and I have briefly discussed how much need there is for performances which student can watch. Shakespeare is profound in performance; but its usually a muddle in the text book. I rarely understood Shakespeare in the classroom. I still think he is very difficult to read as a college student. I don't think its a good idea to give students the text and say go read this whole thing. I'm not sure I would ever have any students other than perhaps an AP class read the whole play (and then only perhaps). Learning doesn't happen when it is that frustrating.
One solution might be to have the class divided into pairs or even possibly on their own translate a small portion of the play and then read the classes translation together. Before they could do that they would need some scaffolding, but at least I think they would have a chance to get into interpreting some text. The next time they approached Shakespeare they would feel a little more confident that they could read and understand some with work. I also think I would spend a bit of time on sharing summaries of plays with students. Especially if I was in middle school or a freshman class I would do simple summaries of Shakespeare texts coming up. That way by the time they got to do fun acting and performing arts activities they wouldn't have to spend all their time on interpreting text, but more on enjoying their performance.
Writing About Literature
I do think that writing about what one reads is one of the singularly most important ways to remember and interact with texts. Of course, you need to have read well and have good questions leading your writing. But I also recognize that the reason I feel this way is that a lot of my best learning is based on what I write and not what I hear and see. But I recognize that other students will not necessarily have the same learning styles and abilities.
Just some thoughts.
