I spent at least an hour trying to figure out how I would write a lesson about a reading strategy. We've spent literally hours writing lessons about books, creating activities that push the kids to make interesting ideas and readings of the text. But though close reading strategies would seem like something that an English teacher should be able to write a lesson based around a close reading of a text (guided through a reading strategy) I found myself baffled as to what strategy I'd want to use and how I could structure an entire lesson around the strategy, rather than merely a single activity as I was used to.
It was a return to the backwards planning method that gave me my lesson writing salvation. I began by asking myself what I wanted my students to be able to do by the end of my lesson. For most of the texts I used, the "AHA moments" reading strategy (asks the students to pay attention to moments in which the characters of the text have a realization that changes the momentum of the story) worked the best and so I wanted to make sure that my students could express their understanding of the strategy and to be able to connect the strategy to the texts we are reading. In looking at all of them I felt that the short story "The most dangerous game" best fit that strategy.
From there I looked at what I would need to do so that my students could meet my goals for them. First they would need to have the strategy modeled for them, so I would tie it to the book they read previously (The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao) accessing their knowledge of the text and associating it to the new strategy. From there I would bridge to "The most dangerous game" asking the students to notice AHA moments on their own. But for me to believe that the students actually understood the strategy I wanted them to be able to articulate why an author might use an AHA moment to affect the story. To me if my students could do that then I would know that they understood everything. It is with that in mind that I finished the lesson with a discussion about the author's intentions in writing those moments.
It was a return to the backwards planning method that gave me my lesson writing salvation. I began by asking myself what I wanted my students to be able to do by the end of my lesson. For most of the texts I used, the "AHA moments" reading strategy (asks the students to pay attention to moments in which the characters of the text have a realization that changes the momentum of the story) worked the best and so I wanted to make sure that my students could express their understanding of the strategy and to be able to connect the strategy to the texts we are reading. In looking at all of them I felt that the short story "The most dangerous game" best fit that strategy.
From there I looked at what I would need to do so that my students could meet my goals for them. First they would need to have the strategy modeled for them, so I would tie it to the book they read previously (The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao) accessing their knowledge of the text and associating it to the new strategy. From there I would bridge to "The most dangerous game" asking the students to notice AHA moments on their own. But for me to believe that the students actually understood the strategy I wanted them to be able to articulate why an author might use an AHA moment to affect the story. To me if my students could do that then I would know that they understood everything. It is with that in mind that I finished the lesson with a discussion about the author's intentions in writing those moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.