My master teacher does a unit in which the class analyzes the social commentary in photographs, poems and short stories. They then spend a few weeks in literature circles digging into the social commentary of several novels. I like the unit, but since I took too long on Macbeth, I have to compress her unit. To accomplish this I have decided to chuck my pseudo-neo-luddite tendencies and take my students on a trip to Blogville.
Today, I successfully got (nearly) all my students to make a blog, but I fear the next step. I intend to have them use their blogs to discuss their group's novel in between class sessions, so when they're in class the discussion is already primed and everyone is on the same page (so to speak).
The question is: How?
I have read about literature circles, and I have spoken with several teachers, but I would appreciate any advice. Also, if you want to check out what I have done so far, go to http://mrlyonshumbleopinion.blogspot.com/ , but I urge you NOT to respond to any posts there... I don't want any of my students sniffing their way back here!
By the way, their final project for this unit will be to produce a mock newspaper in which every student in each circle will produce an article. The group will decide who handles which parts of the layout. There will be both a group grade and an individual grade.
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3 comments:
Very interesting blogs for your students - it is very different from mine. One question - do you have control over how they post? If they write strange stuff, what do you do? My blog allows me to close them out of posting and delete any rude posts.
So far, it looks like your first two blog assignments will allow students to start thinking about important ideas related to their respective books. I really like how blog assignment 1 doesn't just ask them to discuss something like the setting only, but it also asks them to use what they know about the setting to make predictions about how the novel will address social issues.
In terms of the in class discussions, I think it would be worthwhile to have the groups meet in a number of different days. Definitely, you'll want your small groups to meet with each other constantly, but I also think it might be nice at times to get a little jigsaw action going. It might be interesting to have groups in which each member has been assigned to a different book and to have them "teach" or explain what's going on in their own books to their classmates. This could possibly result in chaos, but the small groups could meet with the goal of finding similarities between novels, present their findings to the class, then possibly write about social commentary as a genre. You might even want to form more focused groups to discuss the similarities between two or three specific novels.
The newspaper project seems fun. During high school, I only had an assignment like this once, and it was for history class, but it really stands out as one of the more memorable learning experiences I've had in high school. Good luck.
First of all, I didn't see your posts until this evening. I never check write across because I made a mistake with it. So my blog is http://whitespace-foodie.blogspot.com/ so post there. I love this blog thing, it is a great vent fest and since teaching is so alienating, it allows for "discourse" outside the classroom.
I am wondering if you assign an essay prompt that they can post to the blog then you have a good standard measure? My question about blogs is how do I grade them if I don't ask them to do specific things. How would I would i be equitable?
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