I'm really into my unit. I feel like it would be something I would actually want to teach. I enjoy the texts, and I believe the topic is a relevant and important one.
No, how do I go about making these ideas turn into language arts skills? All of the texts are so perfectly commenting or exploring my essential questions that I feel like my main obstacle to overcome is repetition. Teaching isn't merely about facilitating the opportunity to see the big ideas of texts, especially when a unit is more or less exploring one or a few closely related ideas. Students and teachers alike will get bored. Furthermore, what else will students get out of these inquiries?
Here is where the importance of skills comes in handy. I think this is where I am going to need to focus my concentration over the next few weeks. I need to get better at outlining and planning which skills will belong with which texts and understand that I need to go into these texts with specific, limited skills in mind. As much as I know how valuable these texts can be, they need to be put to an efficient use.
For instance, this week I decided I would do a lesson associated with The Outsiders. For me, I could do an entire unit on this book. I love it. It's perfect. It speaks so clearly to 6-12 students and adults alike. It's characterization is varied and brilliant. The voice is unique. Its exploration of socio-economics and identity is, to use that overused word, timeless. BUT, this text is merely one of a handful in my unit. So, I had to decide how to focus in on one aspect of the text. I thought forcing myself to write one lesson on the text would help in that goal. The product ended up being a discussion and writing activity that focuses on perspective/point of view. There are so many characters in this novel and the idea of how the story would be different based on varying perspective seems like a valuable activity.
Now to do that for all of the other texts.
No, how do I go about making these ideas turn into language arts skills? All of the texts are so perfectly commenting or exploring my essential questions that I feel like my main obstacle to overcome is repetition. Teaching isn't merely about facilitating the opportunity to see the big ideas of texts, especially when a unit is more or less exploring one or a few closely related ideas. Students and teachers alike will get bored. Furthermore, what else will students get out of these inquiries?
Here is where the importance of skills comes in handy. I think this is where I am going to need to focus my concentration over the next few weeks. I need to get better at outlining and planning which skills will belong with which texts and understand that I need to go into these texts with specific, limited skills in mind. As much as I know how valuable these texts can be, they need to be put to an efficient use.
For instance, this week I decided I would do a lesson associated with The Outsiders. For me, I could do an entire unit on this book. I love it. It's perfect. It speaks so clearly to 6-12 students and adults alike. It's characterization is varied and brilliant. The voice is unique. Its exploration of socio-economics and identity is, to use that overused word, timeless. BUT, this text is merely one of a handful in my unit. So, I had to decide how to focus in on one aspect of the text. I thought forcing myself to write one lesson on the text would help in that goal. The product ended up being a discussion and writing activity that focuses on perspective/point of view. There are so many characters in this novel and the idea of how the story would be different based on varying perspective seems like a valuable activity.
Now to do that for all of the other texts.
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