Lesson planning…

In my Structures for Teaching and Learning and Language and Literacy classes, we are discussing lesson planning.

This comes as a relief to me, because we have been studying education in very broad terms for a few weeks now and I’m itching for something a bit more concrete.  I love abstraction, but I need a framework to organize it with.  My knowledge about lesson planning thus far is extremely basic.  Here is what I know:

1. Start at the end goal and work backwards.

This prevents purposeless activities and contrived/artificial ultimate understanding.

2. Identify what you want students to know

Come up with goals: questions students should be able to answer after the lesson, things they should be able to do and think about.

3. Figure out how to test this

I use the word “test” loosely here – this can be anything from a formal assessment to a group discussion where everyone participates.  The point is to gauge learning and determine if students learned what you wanted them to.

Dr. F gave a great example of working backwards on a lesson plan about grammar:

1. End goal:  Eliminate run-ons and fragments.

2. Necessary skills and content knowledge:  Students have to be able to recognize what causes run-ons and fragments.  Punctuation and conjunctions are run-on problems, especially in main clauses.  No verbs and nouns are fragment problems in dependent clauses.  But….

3. What are clauses?  etc.

By starting with the big picture and working backwards, we are able to identify what students may know already and what they don’t.  We can keep working backwards until we arrive at the students’ current base of knowledge; this way we don’t assume they have learned what they haven’t.

This brings me to my own lesson planning.  Currently, I am brainstorming ideas for a Unit Plan I am going to come up with in the next week, hopefully for use in my summer practicum with Portland Public Schools.  The three main ideas I’m rolling around in my head are:

1.  A unit on The Great Gatsby

2.  A poetry unit

3.  A creative writing unit

I know a lot about The Great Gatsby, and I love it – but I almost feel like it’s a cop-out because it is so commonly taught.  I know I could do some interesting things with it, though, and maybe this is one of those situations where I shouldn’t start out with the most epic, challenging, and fascinating subject I can possibly think of.  After all, I am learning new things here.

A poetry unit would be a lot of fun.  I haven’t thought too deeply yet about what I might include, but there are many, many poems that I love that would be fun to teach.

It’s too bad no one reads this blog (yet!) or I could do a poll.  Until then, I will do a bit of research and hopefully come to some conclusions.

Prophets and Radicals/Simplicity

In honor of my recent college graduation, I am going to begin my new less-scholarly life by recapping my favorite class this semester, taught by Dr. Bill Jolliff.  The class was called Prophets and Radicals, and it covered “. . . women and men of conscience. Against more practical judgment, each turned a powerful critical and moral intelligence on contemporary cultures, and they articulated their views in articles and books that people keep reading today. . .” (from the course syllabus).  These authors were, importantly, not mainstream Christians.  Some were Christians, but all were on the fringe of what people considered acceptable.  They were radical, planting and springing from seeds sown by other radicals and prophets.  And despite the fact that they were either fringe Christians or not Christians at all, God’s truth is not confined to Christians, which was the main point of this class:  learning to search elsewhere for truth that may be hidden where we least expect it.  We studied 6 movements/authors/books:
1. Quakerism: John Woolman’s Journal and his essay A Plea for the Poor

2. Trascendentalism:  Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden, as well as some letters he wrote to friends.

3.  Abolitionism:  Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

4.  The Catholic worker movement:  Dorothy Day’s Selected Writings

5.  The beat movement:  Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums

6.  The hippie and back-to-the-land movements:  Gurney Norman’s Divine Right’s Trip:  A Novel of the Counterculture

I really, really enjoyed most of these books.  I think I most appreciate the last two because of my preference for 20th-century American literature, and also because they are novels more than essays or autobiographies (disegard the fact that Kerouac’s novels are autobiographical).   So here are a few little tidbits of my learnings.

Our term paper assignment was to choose a person outside mainstream Christianity who has influenced my life, or whom I want to make an influence in my life.  I wrote my paper about simplicity, as I saw in Jack Kerouac’s life/writing.  Kerouac’s simplicity wasn’t a complete asceticism, as he indulged in plenty of luxuries (namely alcohol, which was his downfall).  But in The Dharma Bums he champions the type of asceticism that challenges excess in the way of possessions, comforts, and worry.  Thinking of worry as part of a complicated life hasn’t really connected for me in this way before.  Reading Ray’s story, though, made me realize that part of a joyful life is simplicity of thought.  Ray is so quick to rejoice and so quick to find pleasure in simple things.  He spends time purposefully doing very little, meditating and being outdoors.  He insists on sleeping outside on many occasions.  He rarely complains about anything.

The spirituality of the beat movement, according to John Lardas, “validated and valorized personal experience by interpreting even the most mundane of activities within a context of universal significance” (from The Bop Apocalypse).  I want the significance of every aspect of my life to be revealed to me in the same way.

Here’s a little excerpt from my paper, in closing:

Ray encounters normal people and calls them “Buddhas” and “bodhisattvas,” and as he praises God for the beauty around him, Ray demonstrates his perspective on spirituality with this prayer:  “Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said ‘God, I love you’ and looked up to the sky and really meant it.  ‘I have fallen in love with you, God.  Take care of us all, one way or the other.’  To the children and the innocent it’s all the same” (Kerouac 186).    Ray’s faith here is simple but genuine.  He approaches God with the spirit of “the children and the innocent,” which is quite a profound statement by Kerouac, especially following Ray’s  often less-than-“Christian” values throughout the story. He seems to suggest that spiritual innocence has very little to do with Ray’s actions and much more to do with the humility and simplicity with which he approaches God.

Merry Christmas.  May the beauty of simplicity rest on you tomorrow and Thursday!

“It’s the beauty of simplicty

That brings me down to my knees

I’ll praise you for eternity

Lord I love you

Because you first loved me

It’s the beauty of simplicity

that fills me with eternity

I tasted your divinity

and Lord I love you

Because you first loved me”

(the ever-inspirational Josh White)

A “Plea”?

I just came across this post.

And I have to completely, totally disagree.

The author of this post claims, as an undergraduate writing teacher, that the stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, not be read because students of writing attempt to copy the writing styles of these authors and fail.  “NO highschooler should be allowed (let alone required) to read [these stories],” Ms. Jones says.

I’m not sure when professors began expecting undergraduate writing students to write as successfully as the likes of Jackson, Hemingway, and Faulkner, but as a writer myself I suggest that the responsibility for these students and their success with writing lies on themselves and on their writing teachers.  Every writer attempts to copy (badly) a favorite unique author at some point.  Sometimes it is terribly unhelpful.  Other times it opens up avenues for the writer’s own creativity and originality.  I have written several poems and songs inspired by poetry by e.e. cummings.  The poems are awful.  The songs are all right.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Blending a student’s own creativity, experiences, and invididual understanding of the story he or she reads can be successful, or not.  Should we dictate a student’s inspiration?  Definitely not.  Teachers can, though, direct students toward more successful methods of personal creativity in writing.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to www.brynnalynea.com, a blog about English and education.

I am Brynna – I am currently a student and am starting this blog for educational and professional purposes, to highlight and share the knowledge I gain about English and beginning teaching. It will also be for personal purposes such as reflection on my experiences.

I will start my graduate studies in secondary education next summer, and I am currently working on studying for and taking the required entrance examinations: the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test), the Praxis II Subject Tests in language arts, and the ORELA (Oregon Educator Licensure Assessment). I will write information about these tests as I prepare for them and complete them.

I will also be writing reviews of literature I am reading, and posting about my personal writing and experiences with entering this field.

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Brynna Lynea