Category Archives: Teaching Literature

Teaching Grammar, Teaching Literature

Selecting Texts

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My department is engaged in textbook selection right now. I’m fairly certain that we have decided which textbook company we would like to work with; however, I think we still need to pin down which peripherals we will order to supplement and exactly which books in the series we will use. I won’t tell you which ones we decided on here, but I will tell you two things that troubled me about this process.

First of all, my department head contacted Holt so that we could examine their series Elements of Literature. I have used this series in the past and really liked it. Unfortunately, they are not very interested in obtaining business from our school. They did not reply to my department head’s queries to visit our school and share their series with us. They did send samples of their ninth grade text. I was not very impressed with it, if I may be honest. We are a small school, and it is probably true that their energies might be better directed toward serving large districts; however, we did feel slighted. My department head and I discussed Holt’s lack of interest in selling books to us and determined that we would not be buying books from them.

Second (and I won’t tell you who), one textbook company admitted that its latest version of the textbook series was “dumbed down” for NCLB. My department head and I compared this version with the previous version, and it is indeed true. The questions are not as challenging. If NCLB is the reason why the texts were “dumbed down,” then one has to wonder what this law is accomplishing. If textbook companies are “dumbing down” selections and questions in order to help schools meet the requirements of NCLB, are the kids really benefitting? Isn’t the idea of NCLB to raise standards, not lower them? Keep in mind that the textbook salesman told my department head himself why the books were less challenging. We examined them for ourselves and determined this was, indeed, true.

What do you look for in a textbook? As much as we repeat the old saw that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I have to admit I find books that have appealing covers and pictures inside, as well as a pleasing layout, grab my attention. I think the students like them better, too. Let’s face it, the eye candy is part of the package. We are teaching the post-MTV generation, and material has to be eye-catching. Is this a concern for you when you select books? I am, of course, not saying that we don’t examine the material to make sure the selections are appropriate, varied, and correlate with standards.

I feel good about the selection we made. I have worked with these books before, and I think the students will like them better than our current texts (which, by the way, are currently out of print and increasingly harder to find). Once details are final, and our principal approves our choice, perhaps I will fill you in.

What do we need to do to get Warriner’s back in print? Will begging work?

[tags]language arts, textbooks, textbook selection[/tags]

Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Civil Disobedience

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For seven of the ten years I have taught, I have taught American Literature. I feel a close kinship with the subject, and I can almost plan for that class in my sleep now. I change up things a little bit each year because each class is different, but some constants remain. I have to admit that I have this “thing” about where I should be in terms of chronology. To be teaching Romanticism right now makes me nervous because my internal American literature clock tells me I should be moving into the twentieth century at this point.

So why am I pushing related readings into my curriculum, knowing it will stretch Romanticism even longer? I decided that instead of “covering” literature, I would just make sure that the trip was interesting and enjoyable. So I taught a piece of literature I had longed to teach for some time — Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” We had just read our textbook’s excerpt from Civil Disobedience. I mentioned what we were studying to one of our history teachers, and she sent me a Gandhi bio and some quotes. So we spend perhaps a week reading the words of King and Gandhi on top of the time we had already spent reading Thoreau. I decided we could make this into a good paper, but I felt like my students might need some help to formulate an outline for this paper.

First of all, I decided students would most easily be able to write either a compare/contrast paper or a cause/effect paper. Because we had already written compare/contrasts and students needed more practice with cause/effect, I chose that angle. Next, I assigned students to study Thoreau’s essay and King’s letter for similar strands or “concepts and ideas” for homework.

When students came to class the next day, they were ready to work with partners. Using my clock buddy system, I had students pair off and compare their findings from their homework. Students were given a chart where they could record quotations from Thoreau, King, and Gandhi. I didn’t reproduce it here because it is very simple to make. Essentially, the chart has four columns and several rows. The row along the top of the four columns reads: “Concept/Idea,” “Thoreau,” “King,” “Gandhi.” After students had quotes for three concepts, we came together as a class and shared our findings.

My students found quotes from each author on the topic of unjust laws, civil disobedience, nonviolent social protest, etc. Students added the ideas from other students to their charts. I asked that students create a thesis statement centered around the idea that Thoreau’s ideas influenced civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi and King, using quotes as evidence.

We are still in the midst of writing the essays, but I think the connections students made to Thoreau were much deeper as a result of examining his influence than they would have been if I had simply breezed through Transcendentalism on the way to Realism.

[tags]Transcendentalism, Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi[/tags]

Teaching Literature

Miss Emily and Walt Whitman

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I am taking Mr. Teacher’s advice and posting about some of the lesson ideas you can find on the handout page.

Arguably the two greatest American poets of the nineteenth century were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, yet two more disparate poets would be difficult to find. For instance, Whitman wrote in free verse, while Dickinson preferred such rigid meter that most of her poetry can be sung to the following tunes: “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” the theme song for Gilligan’s Island, and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Try it. By the way, the reason for this is that Dickinson wrote in hymn meter. That means hymns like “Amazing Grace” will work, too.

Many years ago, I traveled to Atlanta with Gerald Boyd, who was then not the Language Arts Coordinator for the whole state of Georgia, but just for our own Houston County (pronouced not like the city Houston, but like the word house + ton — no, I don’t know why). He took English teachers from two of the other high schools — I represented Warner Robins High, while the two others came from Perry High and Northside High. We were being introduced to a program called Pacesetter English, potentially to determine whether Houston County should adopt it.

I can no longer remember the names of these teachers, but I adapted an offhand comment that the teacher from Perry made about teaching Whitman and Dickinson into a project that has been successful for years.

Download Handout (pdf)What would happen if Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson went on a blind date? For this creative writing assignment, students are asked to put themselves in the role of a matchmaker who is arranging a blind date between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The student’s composition should record the results of the date. Where did they go? What did they do? What did they say to each other? Did they make a “love connection“? Students had to integrate five lines of poetry from each poet seamlessly as part of the conversation between the poets. For example, many students who choose to depict Whitman as egomaniacal like to use the line “I celebrate myself” when Dickinson asks him what he likes to do for fun.

Most students tend to determine that the poets are too different to make a lasting connection. It is up to your discretion as to whether you as a teacher want to get into Whitman’s homosexuality or speculation about Dickinson’s possible homosexuality. It depends upon your students. I also ask students to bold or otherwise draw attention to the lines of poetry so I can catch them more easily. This activity asks students to reach into poetry and think about what it means, to learn about two writers based upon their poetry, and to create a piece of polished creative writing about the two poets.

You can download the handout in either pdf or rich text format. Have fun!

Update: Confidential to the angry student in Chapel Hill, Tennessee who is not happy that I shared this idea because now he/she has to write a two-page paper about it: I direct you my policies and offer hope that you can get past your attitude problem and have fun with the assignment (and make a good grade).

Second Update: O, student who likes pie, You have got to be kidding me.  You are asking me for help after the comment you tried to leave me yesterday?

Nevertheless, my advice is that if your teacher wants you to do the same thing I asked my students to do, you just need to write a story.  Think of where you would like to see them go.  What restaurant?  What would they talk about?  Read their biographies, which should be in your textbook and online.  You could have them go mini-golfing.  Maybe they would go to a poetry slam and poke fun at the mediocre poets there.  Maybe they could go to Burger King and Emily could down five whoppers.  The sky is the limit.  When you revise, put in some lines of their poetry in their dialogue.  For instance, Walt might tell Emily that she’s weird for always wearing white.  Emily could counter with, “Much madness is divinest sense.”  Something like that.  You can actually have a lot of fun with this assignment.

In the future, you might want to remember you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Teaching Literature

If a Body Catch a Body

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It’s that time of year again. We did long chapters on phrases and clauses from Warriner’s, and we only have two weeks before finals. It’s a good time for a high-interest short novel. It’s a good time for The Catcher in the Rye. I introduced the novel today, of course telling my students about Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, Jr. I also told them about the oddy reclusive author. The students complained. I can’t read a whole book in two weeks! I hate reading! I don’t want to read a book. There isn’t even a summary on the back of this book. Why is the cover so plain? You’re killing us, Mrs. Huff. I said, Calm down! Give this one a chance. You’ll like it; just wait.

I always like to start any book by reading aloud, so I cleared my throat and read, “The Catcher in the Rye Chapter One If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

As I continued reading I looked around the room. One by one, I could see J.D. Salinger winning them over. Each nose stuck firmly in this plain book with its unobtrusive cover, eyes scanning the page as I read aloud. Utter quiet. No one surreptitiously checking the clock. At the end of the period, I closed the book and asked the students to finish chapter two. I could be wrong, but it sure looked to me as though not one of them noticed the end of the period had come.

I love teaching this book. Thanks, Mr. Salinger.

You can read more about my experiences teaching this book in the past at my personal blog.

Recommended Reading, Teaching Literature

Boys (Don’t) Read

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Boy ReadingThe other day, one of my students made a special trip to my classroom to give me a folded newspaper clipping. He asked me if I had read the paper — and as I’m remembering it, I can’t recall the day he asked about — and I hadn’t, so he shyly handed me the article. If you have never been a teacher, you probably don’t realize how touching such a gesture is. It says that the student was thinking about me and thought something would interest me. It says also that it interested him, and he wanted me to know it. I can’t find the article at the AJC’s website, but I did find it here.

The gist of the article is nothing new to educators. Boys need to be enticed to read more than girls. If you are looking for good guy books, try Jon Scieszka’s site Guys Read. I told the boy who gave me the article that I think he will like our next novel — The Catcher in the Rye. A more quintessentially guy book would be hard to find. I think it will be fun to read with that class, which is predominantly male.

Image via BBC.

Teaching Literature

Julius Caesar

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A favorite resource of mine, the Folger Shakespeare Library, is somewhat skimpy on lesson plans for Julius Caesar. I have only taught this play once before, earlier in my career. I don’t remember that anything I did then was in any way spectacular, memorable, or brilliant, and I would really like my current students to have a different experience. If you know of resources or have ideas of your own, I would love to hear them.

Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Vocabulary Cards

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I was not really happy with how vocabulary instruction went in my classes last year. Our school purchases really good consumable vocabulary textbooks, but I had the feeling that my students’ grades were impacted too much by vocabulary. In some cases, students who did really well on vocabulary quizzes and always did the workbook exercises had inflated grades, and students who were otherwise good students, but struggled with some aspect of the vocabulary assignment, had grades that I didn’t feel accurately reflected their progress in English.

I knew I wanted to do something different this year. I was going to go with Jim Burke’s idea of vocabulary squares, but I ultimately decided the squares were too small and the students would balk at using them. Even if I told them to create their own large squares, it just seemed too cumbersome. Of course, perhaps some would argue that what I did instead was cumbersome, but I’m pleased with the results. I adapted Jim’s idea into vocabulary cards. Now, I know there is nothing new under the sun, and someone else probably does the exact same thing, but I figured I’d share anyway, and maybe you’ll get a cute handout out of it if you like the idea.

First of all, I ask students to buy 3×5 ruled cards. On the blank side, they write the word and a drawing, symbol, or icon that helps them remember it. I have twins in my class that drew pictures of each other for “petulant,” which made me smile when I graded their vocabulary. On the ruled side, students give the etymology, part(s) of speech, definition, synonyms, and use the word in a sentence.

I gave them a handout modeling the process, which you can download here: Vocabulary Instructions. It has a permanent home on my Handouts page, also.

Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing, Technology

Watch the Wiki

I wanted to invite my e-colleagues to watch my classroom wiki over the next couple of weeks as I implement this ReadWriteThink lesson plan in conjunction with a study of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees.  The page to watch is the Bean Trees wiki.  The students seemed excited about it, and I know that I am.

Assessment, Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

English Journal

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English Journal July 2006I received my complimentary author’s copies of English Journal, July 2006 (Vol. 95, No. 6) in the mail today. It was very exciting to see my writing, complete with pullout quotes and minibiography at the end. I must say that it is very exciting for me to be published in a journal. It makes me feel so professional!

When English Journal published a call for manuscripts related to how teaching in private, independent, or parochial schools impacted what or how we teach, I immediately thought of my “Moral Perfection” unit. I had already learned about tikkun olam, the Judaic concept of “repairing the world” through social justice — doing mitzvot, or good deeds. In his autobiography, Ben Franklin undertakes a self-improvement scheme. He applies typical Age of Reason ratiocination to the task and reports his findings with the accuracy of a true scientist. I have always been fascinated with this selection from his autobiography, which is frequently anthologized for high school American literature texts. Franklin’s quest reminded me of tikkun olam, with the focus on repairing the self rather than the world. I asked my colleague, Rabbi Marc Baker (who since, unfortunately for us, has taken a position at our sister school in Boston, Gann Academy) if there was a Judaic concept similar to tikkun olam, but more self-reflective, repairing one’s own self. He told me about cheshbon hanefesh, which translates as “accounting of the soul.”

Once I began doing research, I discovered that cheshbon hanefesh was a concept first elucidated by leaders of the Mussar movement, a 19th century ethics movement in Orthodox Judaism. In fact, I discovered that Mussar leaders had been influenced by reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography, and even suggested keeping the same sort of record Franklin kept in his “little book.” This discovery, I think, surprised Rabbi Baker, who didn’t realize Franklin actually influenced the concept of cheshbon hanefesh.

During the month of Elul, which leads up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, introspection and a sort of moral evaluation are encouraged in the Jewish faith. When teaching American literature chronologically, Franklin’s autobiography frequently falls during this time. In fact, this last year, I was able to have my students begin their “Moral Perfection” journals on the first day of Elul, which would be Rosh Chodesh Elul. During this month, it is important to self-reflect and repent in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Keeping a journal lends itself very well to religious requirements during this time. It is a perfect confluence of Jewish faith and curriculum.

For the assignment, students read the “Moral Perfection” selection from Franklin’s autobiography. Students choose a virtue they would like to cultivate or a vice they would like to eliminate and for one week, they write reflectively at the end of the day about their success and failure. Students have the opportunity to be creative. Students have turned in some beautiful artwork and created professional-looking journals along with this assignment. I have even had one student (much to my excitement) do the assignment in a blog. I encouraged him to continue blogging, and I hope he has — I don’t think he felt comfortable continuing in that spot where his teacher could read it (and I can’t blame him for that).

There is nothing terribly novel about the assignment. I’m sure a lot of other teachers have done similar assignments with Franklin’s autobiography. What is novel is the close connection to Judaism. When I saw the call for manuscripts, I decided to write an article about the assignment because I felt it had a good chance of being published. Not, as I said, because my idea was so fresh, but because the concentration on how teaching this assignment, for me, was different in a Jewish school. Truthfully, it occurred to me that English Journal might receive few submissions centering on Jewish schools because there are simply fewer Jewish high schools than Catholic or other parochial schools. I admit that I felt English Journal‘s propensity for publishing articles connected with diversity and multiculturalism was in my favor, as well.

So there you have it — the story of how my English Journal article was born. If you want to purchase copies of this issue, visit this link. Look for me on p. 33.

Teaching Literature, Technical/Site Issues

Gatsby Redux

I want to try to get started restoring older blog posts later this upcoming week. Midterm grades are due, and I’m still behind, so I don’t see having time to start until after that.

I did briefly want to share some of my experience teaching The Great Gatsby this year. About midway through the book, one of my students said she was sitting outside reading the book, and at least five older students stopped to tell her how much they loved the book. Another shared that he didn’t want the book to end because it was his favorite book this year. Discussing this book with my students has been a treat. My Honors class was asked to read a segment of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran (when Nafisi’s students put Gatsby on trial) for Monday, and I’m really looking forward to that discussion. I really wish I had taken the time to record some of my students’ insights earlier this week; now it’s Friday, and I’m too tired to do them justice!

Each year, students invariably ask about the book’s cover, Celestial Eyes by Francis Cugat. If you teach Gatsby, you might want to point your students to “Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece.” It is a very interesting essay about the evolution of one of the most famous book covers in American literature. Also, you may be interested to learn that it was on this date, March 10, in 1948 that Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire that swept through Highland Mental Hospital.