I have some updates to announce. First of all, I have updated the lesson plans page (my handouts). Most of the handouts are now available as either Rich Text Format (rtf) or Portable Document Format (pdf). I have added a completely new lesson plan handout based on Discover Schools’ Lesson Plan for Great Books: Walden. My recommendation would be to do this particular lesson with gifted or honors classes. Finally, I have added two new Power Point demonstrations: Fireside Poets (Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Bryant) and American Transcendentalism. I’ve also updated the following pages to reflect these new additions to the website:
Upcoming, you can expect me to include new pages on teaching ninth grade, including grammar, composition, and literature. There are some handouts on the lesson plans page already.
By the way, if you are interested in American literature and want to learn more about the Fireside Poets, I highly recommend Matthew Pearl’s novel The Dante Club, which I reviewed in more detail elsewhere. I have to say that I always teach the Fireside Poets in a cursory manner, but this year, after reading this book, I had a new appreciation for them.
I agree. My kids complain about writing in my class, arguing in favor of "Just telling someone." When I tell them I want them to write entire words, instead of numbers (or combinations of letters and numbers), they balk at the idea. I've pushed the point in a few ways. I've asked them whether they've ever seen or used an actual typewriter; I've asked them if they've ever written a letter. For both, very few students answered they had (and I had to follow this with an explanation of this machine, the typewriter). The only other way I've pushed the point: Whenever a student hands in a paper with the number 2 in place of the word, "to," or R U in the place of "are you," etc., I hand it back and say: "Please rewrite this. There's a number in the middle of this sentence, and I just couldn't figure out what it meant." While text-speak or chatspeak are, technically, gramatically correct, there are places and times to teach writing for the web, email, and so on. Language Arts classes are still far, far away from teaching text-messaging as exemplary writing.
Some great resources here. Thanks for the ideas!
Hi,
I saw elsewhere on your site that you had a Harlem Ren. Unit…. but the link led to an error. Do you still have this available?