Thanksgiving

Since my last post was inspired by Kajder's last chapter, I decided to research some websites that contain engaging lesson plans for Thanksgiving.  I found one in particular that I found to be helpful, and that covered all age groups.

http://www.educationworld.com/holidays/archives/thanksgiving.shtml

While this website had many activities that I felt solely directed to the holiday, I found others that used creative ways to tie the holiday into the normal class curriculum.  What I loved the most was that this website also gave ideas for community service projects!  I remember the classes I loved the most when I was younger was classes that held food drives for our local food pantries.  Not only was I learning how to talk about food in Spanish class, but we learned what it felt like to give back!  I will definitely be using these learning activities in my future classroom even if it is a room full of college students.

Support Structure

In Kajder's last chapter I loved her statement, "Engaging students in new literacies practices with digital media requires not only creativity and ingenuity on your part as teacher but a support structure that helps to move you through the work" (104).  I felt that her section on page 102 best defined what Kajder meant by support structure.  She discusses NCTE and the conferences they hold that provide learning opportunities for teachers.  I agree that a teacher must always be learning by networking and working "alongside professionals you respect to keep growing your thinking" (102).  I also believe that as a teacher, it is natural for the learning process to continue.  However, this natural learning process only goes so far.  I agree with Kajder that it is up to teachers to grow their learning even further past the classroom.  I think that it is vital teachers visit websites such as englishcompanion.ning.com to further learn multi-modal activities for their classrooms.  Even though I do not plan on teaching at a high school level, I will definitely be taking Kajder's advice and looking into conferences like NCTE's conferences to keep my learning juices going.

The Jedi Path

Sooo I was birthday shopping and stumbled upon the book, The Jedi Path.  My mind instantly went to Pirie's article on Drama.  While I am a Star Wars nerd along with many others and was very excited to see that there is an actual guide to being a jedi out there; I also had many questions.  Since Star Wars along with lightsabers is mostly fictional, how can such a realistic guide to this story line be published?  While I was wondering if this style of writing is really realistic, it occurred to me that it is in itself published in order to make something seem more realistic.  This extension of making an object seem more real can definitely be seen when it comes to fictional societies.  

Being a huge fan of Utopian/Distopian Literature, I have found many awesome fictional societies to bury myself into throughout the years.  However, the most interesting ones are the ones who have their own printed language that is exemplified in various smaller books that link to the main one.  For example, The children's story of Dinotopia has various smaller books or additional versions that include the written language of Dinotopia.  With this printed crypt of a fictional societies language, I was able to  make my imagination more real by creating letters to friends or writing pieces of my journal in Dynotopian.  These additional versions or smaller journals that are created off of a main story is also seen in Moore's Utopia.  Many versions after the original had additional maps that allowed the reader to get a better visual of what this world is really like.  Although these worlds are fictional, I found it amazing how small additional details can make a fictional world seem even more realistic.

So I realized that I guess books like The Jedi Path are not that weird at all.  They are only created to make a fictional world seem all the more real.  Not only do they do this but they allow fore readers to continue using their imagination through reading.  While many fans of Star Wars may not like the novels, they can easily follow the world through the film as well as smaller books that relate to specific ways of this fictional world.

Drama in the Classroom

I really enjoyed the kinesthetic learners that Bruce Pirie discusses through the use of drama in the literary classroom.  Nothing really bothered me more than fellow students who were simply book smart, got straight A's, but didn't know how to catch a bus to school without their parents.  I also feel that classrooms can be the same way. While a specific way to analyze or learn an equation is shoved down students throats, students don't always understand why they should do this or feel that they are receiving useful knowledge.  Pirie explains the functions of using drama in class.  He writes, "A third general function stems from the fact that dramatic work unfolds in time: it is about living through experience" (52).  I agree with Pirie, a student is not going to learn or fully understand what they are learning unless they are living through it.  So for the student who is forced to perform an equation a specific way is not necessarily going to think it is useful if they cannot live through it or use it in real life to solve something.  There were many other great factors throughout this chapter of Pirie, but I definitely felt this was the most important!

Standardized testing!

I know most of you are sick of the debate of standardized testing by now, but I am still confused as to why it still exists.  While many think standardized testing is helpful for placing students in the right level of education, I do not believe that this applies to today's education, especially in a generation growing out of technology.  I have recently taken the GRE's and was not shocked to find that I did horrible. I personally know that I am not a good test taker when it comes to standardized tests.  I did not test well on the SAT's or the Praxis, so why would I pass the GRE's. While I know I can be a strong student academically, I felt that the GRE's were riddled full of trick questions and did not consider the fact that the world is full of different kinds of learners.  I know that my low scores will knock me out of the running for some schools but most schools nowadays do not place the sole reason for denying or accepting a student on their testing scores.  I also know most scholars acknowledge that everyone learns and tests differently, so my big question is....Why is there still standardized testing?!

In search of an answer to how my under-qualified scores would effect me, I emailed most graduate departments asking their policy on GRE scores versus acceptance.  A majority of them stated that they did not really look at standardized scores, but looked at the application as a whole.  There were some schools that did set a standard for GRE scores, which really rubbed me the wrong way.  Why set a standard for a test that most individuals will not take well due to the fact that it does not take into consideration various types of learners? While there obviously were some schools that disqualified me as a possible candidate, most did not use the GRE's as a main factor for accepting students.  So, once again I'm going to ask, why is the United States still forcing students to take these unrelated and unfair standardized tests?  If someone out there knows the answer to this, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

Class Wikis: Giving Students Power

I really enjoyed Edmondson's article, "Wiki Literature Circles: Creating Digital Learning Communities."  At one point she discusses how she was "hesitant" with creating activities on Wiki's because of the control it gave the students.  I agreed with her in that highschooler's can be seen as too young to handle this kind of power.  As a student being able to post stuff on a single wall for all classmates to see, a Wiki can be turned into a mode for abuse.  Edmondson discusses how "For assignments that require relinquishing control of the classroom to students, assessment can be tricky" (47).  Despite the possibility of students taking this form of control too far, I believe it is important that students feel that they have a choice to do what they want as well.  As a student, I know how frustrating it can be to be simply told what to do.  However, if I am given control to teach what I want on a project, or post what I want on a discussion board; I am instantly more engaged in the class curriculum.  I believe that Wiki's are a great way to give students a sense of choice and control in the classroom!  Edmondson writes that wiki's allow students to "facilitate presentations, instead of...other traditional methods" (45).  I really enjoyed this description of a wiki because it allows the teacher to see that students can responsibly "facilitate" a class presentation instead of be told how to produce and give a limited presentation.  I strongly agree with Edmondson (Marc Prensky) that "teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students" (44).  I believe that a teacher's use of a wiki is a perfect way to communicate and bring in the language of their younger, technology oriented, students.  What I felt to be the most important point in this article was that Edmondson acknowledges that using wiki's in a younger-aged classroom can be tricky, but that in the end, if introduced into the classroom properly, Wiki's allowed her students to take an extra mile.

Halloween

In the spirit of Halloween I wanted to talk about how introducing the tradition of horror stories (oral or written) can help in the literary classroom.  There are many ways to get students still learning in a creative way for this particular holiday.  I have had teachers who allow us to storyboard and to create short videos as a project.  With the video we have to translate the movie into a story form.  Although the movie part was not my favorite, I loved going screen by screen and translating every detail into a narration.  I always thought it was funny how some of my classmates believed the film to be more suspenseful while others found the reformat of the written story to be the scariest.  It was the class after this project that we focused on how these horror stories were passed down before writing them down was possible.  I loved focusing on how a story could be transformed into oral language, with pauses and moments of silence to drag on the horror of the tale.

I love to read  but hearing a story that is spoken and not read is always the most effective.  I can't even say how many times I have heard the tale of the Jersey Devil, but each time it's a little different and each time just as scary.  I found some websites that focus on some tales that can jump start this activity in the classroom.  Most of them are podcasts to provide the eerie sense that every student craves on Halloween.  I loved doing this activity in High School and look forward to using some form of this in my classroom to stress the importance of storytelling before written language came along.


http://americanfolklore.net/halloween.html.  (This is a great website with scary stories through the form of podcasts)

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Storytelling-and-Ghost-Stories/ (goes over particular factors that heighten the effect of a story)

Gender Issues in Graphic Novels

I never really though about it but Mary Rice discusses the problem of gender issues in comic books and graphic novels.  She discusses the issues that some of her girls were having over the way women were portrayed in comic books.  Rice also discusses the "hyper-masculine" male characters (3).  Although Rice does not discuss her objection to this factor for long, she leaves it out there for her readers to contemplate.  I think that introducing comic books into the literary classroom is a good idea; however, Rice is right.  It is important to try and pick the right book with appropriate images.  While this seems like it is impossible to do considering the culture of comic books is mainly centered on art and this art is definitely a product of our culture in the way it portrays the ultimate man and woman.  I believe it is because of this that the question is raised as to what age group should be begin to introduce comics that may have some questionable art work?  What age do you guys think would be appropriate where the students will be able to see past the images and instead use the images to help them with their literary understanding of the actual story?