Workshop Narrative: Of Mice and Men
When I think about workshopping a resource collection,
the first thing I do is to think about the themes and essential questions I
want my students to be accessing, discussing, and dialoguing. In the case of Of Mice and Men, I want to slant the
collection towards the positive power of friendships and community—students
come to school with varying levels of stress, difficulty, and challenges, so
it’s important to me to make sure that even the difficult, “real-life-is-hard”
texts are offered within a context of empowerment and personal self-growth. I
don’t want to shield students from the dark themes found in difficult
literature, but I do want them to see the potential for good—for growth—in
whatever questions we’re asking and whatever themes we’re unpacking. I’m
building a unit around the central ideas and essential questions of what
characteristics make valuable friendships, and what power community and
friendship play in determining our quality of life. Conversely, I want students
to think about the potential negative impacts of isolation or solitude on the
human life. In our current world, there are so many correlations between
isolation and negative psychological issues; mass shootings, acts of terrorism
against communities and civilians, human trafficking, sexual and emotional
abuse in families… obviously, the list could go on and on. I feel that
recognizing the harmful and complicated effects of isolation can be a powerful
starting point for students to build empathy for students who might not be like
them.
I would start the unit with an anticipation guide of some
sort, and I’d center it on the essential questions and topics of the
informational texts. I chose informational texts that would work together in
this way, because I want them to be the building blocks for our first “how to”
lesson on Socratic seminars. I will have everyone read the two articles linking
friendship and happiness, and then I will split the students into two groups
and have them read either the Greek myth of Damon and Pythias (better for
struggling readers) or the “Island Where People Forget to Die” article, which
is much longer and written on a higher reading level (for my advanced kids). I’d
like to transition from the anticipation guide to a Socratic Seminar where we
can “practice” the form of it by discussing the anticipation guide and the
articles. I think it’s important to access student’s prior knowledge and get
them frontloaded to be reading for certain themes and motifs.
We’ll
read the informational texts, poems, and songs as a class. What I mean is that
we will all read all—the poems, songs (which I’ll use like lyrical poetry) and
articles will all be read by all of the class. I’ll probably focus on the
poetry elements as “break out” days or mini-lessons to use between whole class
reading of OMM and lit circles. They’ll
read the informational texts independently, but discuss them in a Socratic
Seminar format.
I’d
like to also include some historical informational texts about America during
the 1930’s—I think I’ll create a one day lesson/powerpoint describing The Great
Depression; that way, I can either do a direct instruction session during class
time, or allow students to flip the class and experience the
powerpoint-with-media at home before coming to class.
To
facilitate response within and among students, I’m going to use a lot of
questioning, small group questions during lit circles, and Socratic seminars at
the beginning, middle, and end of the unit. I will engage students in
open-ended questions as we read together, and I love the Say Something
technique; it works great for both whole class reading and independent reading.
Because
Of Mice and Men is only six chapters,
I plan on reading the entire novella aloud during class. I believe this is an
especially strong technique when there are struggling readers, and it will
allow me to pause and ask questions or gauge reactions based on the moments I
deem important. I will also create opportunities for reader response
application activities on days we read aloud. In a unit spanning 3-4 weeks, I
won’t be reading aloud for more than 6 days. I will make sure students have
plenty of time to engage in guided, small group, and independent reading.
I’m
going to frontload the unit with informational texts that allow me to discuss
themes and big picture questions. I’ll use the literary texts to flesh out the
application and discussion of those questions. I think a real “aha” moment for
me was realizing that literature units don’t have to center on a canonical
texts; my unit is really an effort to discuss and engage in the essential
questions of community, friendship, the power of hope and the negative effects
of isolation and selfishness. OMM is
just one of the texts I’ll use to access the hidden curriculum of developing
empathy and creating compassion for others. My YA novels will continue that
curriculum.
I
am so excited to use my YA books in my book clubs! I’ll make sure to do an
“introduction day” where I’ll present the different options and have students
write down their first and second choices. I chose YA novels with very diverse
plots and characters, but similar themes. Some of the topics involve homosexual
relationships, teenage illness, death, cyber-friendship, and historical WW2 spy
fiction. I want to make sure students choose books they want to be reading, and
I’ll make sure to have read all five (I’m thinking positively here) so that I
can know exactly what they will encounter as they read. The book club idea is
one I’ve learned from this course, and I love it—I can’t wait to spend Mondays
in books clubs. I will also definitely be including a group multigenre project
as an assessment project after the YA book clubs. After this course, I’m
passionately committed to giving my students creative projects.
I am liking the idea of
using the song lyrics as an independent reading activity, and I think I might
want to include them as reader-response blog entries or a class wiki. I think I
could create links to the songs on youtube and then have students respond to
them by connecting back to the reading they’re doing in their YA novels, the
short stories, poems, and OMM. I
could do one song a week for a few weeks, and let those blog entries be a casual
reader-response and connection back to the unit’s essential questions and
ideas.
I’ll want to use formal
analysis and critical synthesis with OMM,
primarily, and with poetry, secondarily. I want to use close reading passages
from OMM to invite my students to
reflect on certain aspects of OMM:
the treatment of Crooks as the only African American, the feminist questions
about Curly’s wife who never has a name, etc. I’ll bring in some critical
synthesis discussing these issues and then host a Socratic seminar midway
through the novel. We meet Crooks in chapter 3, so midway is a great
opportunity for Socratic. The poetry will be a great way to include literary
elements, terms, and the style and structure of different writers, and I think
formal analysis of a short poem is a very do-able single lesson for high school
students.
I want to make sure
that anytime my students are reading independently or as a whole group, we are
using some kind of reading strategy. There are hundreds and hundreds to choose
from, so I’m just going to use pre, during, and post-reading strategies as
often as I want and I’m going to use whichever ones I want. I want students to collect a sort of “reading
toolbox” that includes a wide variety of strategies. I’m drawn to strategies
that allow for bookmarks, annotations or handouts—I’d have the students keep
those in their reading notebooks for reference or use bookmarks with the books
we’re reading… I’m also going to annotate the crap out of whatever
informational texts we read. I mean, rather, that I’m going to have the
students annotate their articles, but I’m also going to annotate along with
them so I can model how personal and easy it is to engage the texts.
I’m going to use the
art to teach vocabulary and grammar! I’ll use them as bell-ringer activities
where students will have to write sentences describing what they see, or where
they’ll have to take a list of words, reflect on the art, and create a word
poem or paragraph of description.
We’ll study the craft
of writing by selecting passages we love from any and all the texts we’re using
--and doing close readings of them. The students will also use reading
strategies that often require writing, and they’ll respond to art, music, and
picture books through writing. I think I might have a day where we study the
structure and style of our two picture books, and then I’ll have my students
create their own picture books (using an app like Storybird.com) that reflect
the themes or questions of our unit.
I’m playing with the
idea of having students watch the films as homework and, as they watch them,
they’ll write down quotes they think are particularly significant for our unit
themes. I like the idea of them watching movies at home with their friends or
families and then compiling a Master List of Quotes that they can use to weave
into their writing about other texts in the unit. I’m not sure of the film
idea, but that’s an initial thought.
I want the unit to be
full of rich textual projects that are creative as well as analytical or argumentative.
The students will work on multiple projects that reflect a wide variety of
approaches to literature, and then they’ll select three pieces to include in a
final portfolio. I’ll make sure that they each include at least one creative
and one analytical representation, and then they’ll choose a third piece based
on their personal preference towards one form or the other. I haven’t decided
yet if I’ll have the do a kind of class presentation, or have them post their
pieces in an online portfolio and invite them to share the links – I don’t
know.
I have learned SO MUCH
this semester about creating and exploring a literature unit. The readings this
semester have really opened my eyes to the many possibilities for creativity
and student-choice application, and I’m very excited to teach The Priceless
Wealth of Friendship in my classroom some day soon! J
