Unit Development

I believe my feelings about my unit coincide with what Samantha wrote in her blog below: I love my topic and ideas so far, but I need to hone in on lessons and skills that will make my unit feasible. 

Right now my essential questions deal with marginalization and how/why it is expressed in a text.  Other interconnecting ideas across my unit are people as property, negotiating boundaries, education and suffering.  I think each of my texts gives insight to these topics while being very different from one another.  I see how they could each connect and contribute to one another, but how do I share this with the student?  I need to now begin considering in what form students should explore these texts and how they will demonstrate their ‘take-aways.’

Similar to what Michael wrote in his blog below, I think I need to work on limiting my critique of each text.  Part of the difficulty of transitioning from an English student to a teacher is that I do not necessarily get to do the fun stuff of analyzing a text(besides maybe in our teacher’s log and/or rationale), but need to think about how students are connecting to it instead.  So, what activities will serve the function of my students connecting to these texts? And how will I best plan for carrying them out, then assessing them?  Those are the questions that I am now considering and will hopefully resolve over the next week of planning.

On a side note, I read this article today http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/ and wouldn’t mind hearing other’s thoughts about it if you feel strongly about the topic.  It reminded me of The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Rancière, which we read last year in a class and I found intriguing.