I'll be honest, the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about teaching ideas related to the soda ban was a debate. I am not sure if debates are generally parts of English classrooms, I never had any experiences with them in my English classes, but maybe in a speech class or a history class a debate on the article would be more relevant. With the Soda Ban article, an educator could really work with students on view points and argumentative work. One half of the students could "argue" in favor of the new law, and the other half would have to "argue" against it. Another idea would even be having students use the article as a prompt for an argumentative essay where they would have to take a stance on the topic, which leads me into specifically focusing on teaching ideas in an English classroom...
Even though I loved my English classes in high school, I always feel like I wanted more variety in the reading. I also know that a lot of students don't like English. Those students usually picture English with reading boring books from a super long time ago. While I love classic literature and value it in a lot of ways, I honestly think there is no reason why some of the reading in older high school classes shouldn't be current topics and articles. The Soda Ban article represents a great, fresh piece of text that could be used
in a whole bunch of different ways. I don't remember there being a whole
much of variety in any of my English classes in high school--one year
it was Shakespeare, another year it was all war novels. And so I think
in general, just adding materials like articles to an English classroom
would really enhance the reading abilities of students, and at the same
time inform them about what is currently going on in our world. They are also a great way to invoke class discussions. I wish I had more of all of that in high school.
One of the aspects that I love about English (well, my favorite aspect about English) is writing. My AP English teacher in high school put a huge emphasis on writing, and once I got to college my interest in it exponentially increased. I took creative writing classes, argumentative essay writing classes, advanced essay writing classes, creative non-fiction writing courses. This past semester as an undergrad, my final semester, I even took a class where we learned how to write radio scripts. Of course, there is some styles of writing that I don't find myself putting too much thought in, but as a whole, I really enjoy learning about all of the different branches of writing. I think that the soda ban article, and other articles would be great resources to bring to high school students (especially 12th graders) to expose them to different styles of writing. To expose them to journalism. This article could be read, analyzed, and broken apart to teach students about persuasive writing, about non-fiction pieces. Also, by using a current article to teach students about journalism and writing styles, they can also learn about what is going on in the world.
In Nurture Shock, which we are reading in our Ed 606 class, we just recently covered a chapter that talks about drilling and practice when getting material into a student's long term memory. While the authors emphasized the necessity of practice in learning, they also emphasized the importance of variety so that learning doesn't get boring. Even if an article like the Soda Ban article is used to "drill" students on grammar rules, or to practice reading in younger high schoolers perhaps, it represents a different way of practicing these skills. As an English teacher, I hope to vary the reading material as much as I can when I am working on automatizing skills with my students.
I also had trouble creating a concrete lesson idea for a language class too, but after the discussion on friday we came up with a journalism concept too! I think that you could have your students practice writing an editorial like piece so that they can have experience writing in variety of styles. To include technology, you could even have them post their editorials on CNN or Huffington Post articles on the subject! (And I think with technology constantly changing, having the students write their ideas online would be beneficial, because they can use it in the future!)
ReplyDeleteIt is so interesting. You have taken quite a variety of writing courses. Radio scripts? What was that like? I would imagine that might be an area in which high school students may enjoy or find interesting. Do you think that subject could be used in your English classroom? With the number of writing courses that you have taken, have you ever given consideration to writing a book? Or Peer-reviewed article? ☺ I do actually enjoy writing. That interest came after undergrad. However, I do not do it unless I have to; like for a course. The only writing that I do outside of the classroom that is not assigned is in a journal.
ReplyDeleteHi again, Lakeza! I am really happy that you are so interested in the past writing courses that I took in undergrad. I love writing so much, I love when people ask me about it! Yes, so my last semester, I was looking around for some "fun" classes that still were English classes for my requirement and came across this grad level class actually that was all about radio drama. I was so nervous, especially after the first class because my professor told us that our grades would be calculated from two 30-minute radio show scripts that we would be writing! I had never written anything fiction before, let alone a script so I was so nervous. But I couldn't be happier that I stayed in the class. Our professor was the absolute nicest man, and such a fun teacher! I learned all about old time radio shows by listening to them almost every night for homework, and finally, yes wrote my own shows! At the end of the year too we actually performed two of the scripts of our classmates. It was such a blast.
DeleteEven though this class was all fiction writing and fun, I learned more about writing than I could ever imagine. I think this is totally a topic that can and should be explored in a high school English classroom. I am very passionate about writing--I think that it is a subject that needs to be emphasized and exclusively taught at the high school level more than it is today. I definitely think that especially among some of the novels included in high school curriculum, and time periods explored, that a radio script would be a great way to mix writing with the time period being learned about, instead of your regular argumentative or interpretive essay. Yes it is important to learn how to write a standard five-paragraph paper that has claim, but I feel like assignments like radio scripts would help students work on grammar, spelling, and sentence structure without seeming like such a boring assignment. They could be used to capture the students that don't like English as well. Overall, I just really think with learning that creativity is so important, especially with all of these young minds that we are going to be in front of. It is our job to reach out to these minds in as many ways that we can.
That is really great that you keep a journal. It really is a superb way to express your feelings--there is nothing more comforting enough sometimes than writing down emotions and thoughts.I like writing about those sorts of things in creative non-fiction works. I really like writing about my experiences. Maybe one day I will be able to put all of my pieces together to show people, but no unfortunately I don't know if I will be writing a book! Haha. It would be very very cool, I would just have to have a good idea first :) A peer reviewed article would also be absolutely amazing--our 695 class has really gotten me more and more into research. I will just have to see where my interests and teaching career take me, I guess :)