Category Archives: Teaching Literature

Teaching Literature

Teaching “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning

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As I mentioned over the weekend, on Friday, a colleague allowed me to teach her British literature class. I taught Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover.” This poem is anthologized in some literature texts and not in others; therefore, if you do not have it in your book, you can download it here: “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning.

First, I gave students some background on Robert Browning, dramatic monologue, and the poem itself. See this Power Point presentation:

I didn’t show students the final slide until after we read the poem. You could, if you like, change that slide so that it reveals some of the information provided. Feel free to download it and mix it up. In order to present the material, you will want access to information about the poem and the disease Porphyria. In addition to our textbook (citation at the end of the post), I used the following links in preparing for the poem:

The meat of the lesson is the debate. If Porphyria’s lover were tried in a courtroom for murder, would the evidence, as presented in the poem, show that he is guilty of murder — that he knowingly took Porphyria’s life, that he was entirely self-aware — or not guilty by reason of insanity — that he was not aware of what he was doing and acted out of madness. Evidence for either argument exists in the poem, and students can argue both sides successfully. They should be going back into the text for support of their argument. This assignment can even be extended into an argumentative or persuasive essay. I chose to make it a class discussion.

Work Consulted:

Pearson Education, Inc. Prentice Hall Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes: The British Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Professional Development, Teaching Literature

Teaching Shakespeare Institute

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I am very excited to tell you I was selected to participate in the Teaching Shakespeare Institute here in Decatur, Georgia next month.

If you haven’t checked out all the Folger Shakespeare Library has to offer teachers, go take a look now.

Assessment, Professional Development, Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Reflecting on Backward Design

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The end of the year is drawing closer, and today I was thinking about backward design.  This year was the first year I implemented backward design planning.  I have been really impressed with how much students have learned.  My 9th grade students in particular really seemed to connect to this type of learning; furthermore, unless I’m a horrible judge, they have seemed more engaged than I can remember any other class being.  Today they started working on the performance assessment for the unit I created for Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye.  Students were researching and writing about the impact of media and society on how people feel about their bodies.  At the same time as they were analyzing a novel’s theme, they were also writing persuasive essays about body image, using research to support writing, and learning about ways in which literature truly can be a lens through which we examine our society.  In times past, I don’t think I would have designed an assessment nearly as good as this one, and students were clearly interested in what they were learning through their research.  They frequently called me over to read facts and statistics they found.  They wanted me to read what they had written.  One student began her essay with an anecdote that integrated information she learned from a YouTube video I showed the class.  And it was a brilliant introduction.

I know I sound like an evangelist when I talk about UbD, but I can’t help it.  Backward design revolutionized the way I teach.  I feel rejuvenated and invigorated by working with my students.  And I am learning so much, too!  Every day, I just can’t wait to work with students on the units I’ve created.  I truly enjoy planning and creating units now that I have a clear process that helps me focus and think about why I do what I do.  I am really proud of all my students have learned and are learning, and much credit for those learning experiences belongs to UbD.

Professional Development, Teaching Literature

Teaching Shakespeare Mini-Institute

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Michael LoMonico let me know of a change in this summer’s Teaching Shakespeare mini-institute in Georgia.  The event will now take place at Glennwood Academy in Decatur from June 9-13 and includes a trip to the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern on Thursday the 12th to see Much Ado About Nothing. The workshop is free, and teachers attending will receive a $500 stipend.  Hurry and register!  The deadline is this Friday, May 9.

Register here.

If I can get approval, I’ll see you there.  I will have to miss two days of post-planning.

Movies in English Class, Reflection, Teaching Grammar, Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing, Technology

Week in Reflection, April 28-May 2

Our Spring Break was last week, so I didn’t post a reflection.  As this was the week of our return to school, and we have also entered that final stretch of the year, I’m not sure either I or the students were as plugged in as usual.

My seniors basically have two weeks left because our school allows them to finish early.  Next week and the week after, they will be working on a final paper for me.  This week, we finished watching A Streetcar Named Desire, and I was struck again by Brando’s performance.  You probably know this bit of trivia, but Brando was the sole member of the core cast not to receive an Academy Award, though he was nominated.  Vivian Leigh won Best Actress for her portrayal of Blanche; Kim Hunter won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Stella; and Karl Malden won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Mitch.  The Best Actor award that year, however, went to Humphrey Bogart for his performance in The African Queen.

My ninth grade students are working through grammar.  One class finished up phrases and started on clauses.  The other class learned about active and passive voice and began discussion of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye.

The tenth grade writing class I teach presented Power Point presentations.  So often our kids add animations, busy backgrounds, and too much text, then read the text rather than use it as a guide for the audience.  Despite my instructing students on the perils of Death by Power Point, a few of their presentations included some of the problems I’ve mentioned, and I am frustrated that I somehow was not able to communicate how to avoid these issues to my students.  Also, I am frustrated by the fact that in order to be successful, they had to unlearn bad Power Point habits, which may explain why all of them weren’t successful.  We need to teach kids how to use Power Point correctly from the start.  I think too many teachers are a little too impressed by all the bells and whistles and actually reward students for making cluttered, busy, and ultimately unreadable presentations because they themselves don’t know how to do some of the things the students do, thus the teachers assume it’s hard and took a lot of time and effort.  Let’s face it, our students have become accustomed to being rewarded for style over substance.

The last two days of the week, my writing class began a unit on SAT preparation and practice.  I have evaluated SAT essays in the past, and as I haven’t done so for quite some time, I suppose it’s safe to disclose this fact.  Students generally find this unit to be very helpful.  I have been using Sadlier-Oxford’s helpful Grammar and Writing for Standardized Tests as a guide; I highly recommend this book, as it focuses on the SAT’s writing section (error correction, sentence and paragraph correction, and essay).

Teaching Literature

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday—at least we think it is. Some awesome ways to celebrate:

Read Shakespeare’s sonnets, or read a Shakespeare play.

Peruse lesson ideas at the Folger Shakespeare Library‘s web site and create a Shakespeare lesson for your students.

Watch an adaptation of a Shakespeare play or the wildly historically inaccurate but fun Shakespeare in Love.

Take up historical fiction based on Shakespeare’s life. I’m reading Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess, but other options include The Shakespeare Diaries: A Fictional Autobiography by J.P. Wearing, The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood (YA), or Shakespeare’s Sister: A Novel by Doris Gwaltney.

If you can’t be in Stratford, be there in spirit while viewing this photo essay on Shakespeare’s Birthday Celebration.

Image source: Yelnoc.

Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Teaching Poetry

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Inspired by this post by Traci Gardner at the NCTE Inbox Blog, I thought I would share some of my own resources for teaching poetry.

Getting the KnackAs Gardner mentioned, Getting the Knack by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford is a really good resource with lesson plans and ideas for poetry writing assignments.  I have used their found poem exercise many times, always to great success.  I don’t care how old students are, they always enjoy using scissors and glue.  These poems can be surprisingly good and surprisingly challenging to write, too.  What I like about the book is that it presents poetry as a craft, and the exercises enable all students to become poets.  This book has been in my professional development collection for years.  It is a good addition to a middle grades or secondary high school English teacher’s teaching and writing toolbox.

Gardner didn’t mention this book, probably because it is out of print, but Joseph I. Tsujimoto’s Teaching Poetry Writing to Adolescents is another handy book to have in your collection, and you can find it through used book sellers at Amazon (follow the book link).  It’s a shame this resource was allowed to go out of print!  The strength of Tsujimoto’s work is in the variety of poetry writing assignments (18) and the student models.  In this NCTE article from Classroom Notes Plus (October 2002), Rosemary Laughlin writes glowingly of Tsujimoto’s models, and this article written by Betsey Coleman in VOYA (PDF) also praises his work highly, and both say pretty much what I would say.

Inside OutI have also used Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing by Dan Kirby and Tom Liner (in an earlier edition not including third author Dawn Latta Kirby, but instead with writer Ruth Vinz).  The focus in this book is not strictly on poetry, but on teaching writing in general, including research writing and expository writing.

Lisa Huff has a a new series of posts on teaching poetry at her blog, and the Reflective Teacher’s Literature Pocket Mod could easily be focused on just poetry.  Finally, I posted my poetry unit idea to the UbD Educators wiki, and I would love feedback.

Issues, Recommended Reading, Teaching Literature

Helping Families Support Literacy

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NCTE Inbox‘s great post “Helping Families Support Readers” is a great resource for teachers looking for materials to support family literacy and summer reading programs. My own tips:

  • Read by example. Let your children see you with a book in your hand, enjoying reading, and they will want to do it, too.
  • Read to your children. Keep reading to them even after they learn to read for themselves.
  • Set aside class time to read. I don’t do this well because my current school schedule doesn’t allow for it, but when I student taught, my supervising teacher set aside each Friday for reading. Also, the entire school had time set aside two days a week when everyone was supposed to drop everything and read. It had a tremendous impact on SAT scores.
  • If you can, allow for some choice. For instance, if you teach American literature, you might want to teach Edgar Allan Poe, but you can allow students to pick which story (or which three stories) they read. You can also allow students to pick a book or two on their own and get credit for a project or paper based on that book. I have successfully integrated this kind of outside reading in my classes before.
  • Make suggestions. I suggested a reluctant reader try Stephenie Meyer‘s books, and she loved them. She might not have tried them out if I hadn’t said I thought she would like them.
  • Give parents and students resources. Many times I have had parents lament that they can’t get their sons to read, for example. I point them toward Guys Read, which has some great suggestions for books for boys.
Assessment, Teaching Literature

The Bluest Eye

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The Bluest EyeToni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye is frequently challenged due to situations involving rape and incest. When I first read it several years ago, I found it shocking, but I think it teaches us interesting things about how we define beauty in our society, what acceptance and love are, and how we harm not just black women but our entire society with narrow ideas about beauty and acceptance.

My ninth grade students will read The Bluest Eye as the last novel study this year. I think we will have time to do a study of short fiction and poetry in May following this book. I have just created a UbD unit for this novel; feel free to check it out and give me feedback. One thing I have noticed about myself is that when I create these units, I really skimp on the Learning Plan part. I think that might be because my schedule is so different from most other teachers with a rotating block and frequent schedule alterations that it is hard for me to make a day-by-day plan at the beginning, but I do have a chronological outline for approaching the novel. I will begin with the following video:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/rjy9q8VekmE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Every time I watch this video, it makes me cry — right at the part when the children are choosing dolls. I once had a student who wrote an essay about what she would be like as she aged, and with each progression in age, she noted that her skin was lighter (she was fairly dark-skinned). Part of her definition of future success involved something she couldn’t do anything about — something she shouldn’t feel like she should have to do anything about. I remember crying over that essay, too. And feeling helpless.

I found an excellent webquest by Cele Bisguier that I will use for my performance task.

Teaching Literature

Choosing Books for Students

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Reading SiddharthaHow do you decide what your students read?

For many of us, which books we have available in the book room or which books are approved by the school system’s list may limit our choices.

I had a conversation the other day with an English student teacher I know, and she was telling me of her frustrations that her college is pushing her to integrate YA lit into her lesson plans, while the school where she is student teaching is advising her to limit her selections to the book room.  I remember taking a course in YA lit in college, and while I loved my professor, the venerable Dr. Agee, who has since retired from UGA, I was never able to use much of what I learned in the class in my high school teaching experience.  NCTE also pushes YA lit, to the point of recommending (or they did when I was in college, anyway) books like From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges Between Young Adult Literature and the Classics by Sarah K. Herz and Donald R. Gallo — a book whose purpose is to help teachers learn which YA books might be paired with classics already in the classroom.

I actually really like YA lit.  I am reading New Moon, the second book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga.  I am a total Harry Potter nut.  For my money, The Giver is one of the best dystopian novels I’ve ever read (I love dystopian novels, too), and the only part of teaching middle school that I really enjoyed was teaching The Giver.  I don’t mean to discourage YA lit.  I think the agenda of our education schools and NCTE is clear — let’s present our students with age-appropriate literature that will grab them.  I agree that students should be encouraged to read YA lit, but I’m not sure that I agree we need to let it take over the high school curriculum, and I don’t agree with Teri Lesesne (in the article “Question for the Ages” below), who says that The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter, and Beowulf are more appropriate in college.  I have successfully taught all three books in high school, and I would even argue that Catcher is best suited for high school — the symbolism is easy, making it a great introduction to symbolism, and students around Holden’s age relate to him.

Some more reading on the subject:

If you have more research or articles on the use of YA lit in the high school classroom and/or selecting age-appropriate books for students, feel free to share in the comments.

Image credit: Nick Today.