syllabus
calendar
blackboard
student.email resources

last.updated 4.9.06

Abstracts: Group 5

B-SOL

The overall unit covers the Canterbury Tales. It is for a Senior level English course. The main focus will be to analyze the text of that time period and discuss how it is important in the literary and political sense. The students will have already studied a significant amount of British history as well as taken notes on Geoffrey Chaucer. They will also have been briefed on how to write a reflection paper. There will be an oral presentation in the middle of the unit and again at the end of the unit.

In the mini-lesson, the students are going to analyze different pilgrims in the prologue. They will identify outstanding characteristics and anything memorable about them. They will eventually present a pilgrim to the class. For this, the students will take on the role of the pilgrim in some way, shape, or form. They will be required to write a reflection piece about how they felt about becoming the pilgrim and turn it in as a part of the Canterbury Tales project.

The students will need to create props to represent their pilgrims. This will be done later.

Laura

This mini lesson is geared towards an eleventh grade English class. The unit revolves around Shakespeare and his play, Romeo and Juliet. Students will be working throughout the unit to understand major themes within the play, and to develop their writing skills. The major assignment for students is to write a persuasive paper on a theme presented in the play. Today, in groups of three, students will revise and edit each others rough drafts. Today's mini lesson takes place right before we break into groups for peer review.

For today's mini lesson, students will focus on the revision process and how to complete an effective review. The teacher will provide information to students and allow students to participate in a discussion on why peer review is important. A power point presentation will be used to keep the students engaged. The teacher will explain positive feedback as well as constructive criticism, focusing on why they are both important elements to a review. A worksheet on constructive criticism will be passed out for students to silently complete. After discussing answers to the worksheet, the teacher will pass out the peer review worksheet. Together we will briefly go over the worksheet and then break into groups to start our peer review.

The goal of this mini lesson is to fully prepare students for the peer review session. Many times students do not know how to use time wisely and provide helpful information. This mini lesson should prepare students to complete a review that is full of both positive feedback as well as constructive criticism. Students will understand the importance of peer review, and why we spend so much time focusing on it. This lesson teaches students the importance of revision and editing, and gets them started on proofreading their papers. Students will have a better understanding of what to look for in their peer's papers as well as their own.

Lynetta

The Unit
This unit is about persuasive writing in the eleventh grade. Throughout the unit, students will have looked at various texts pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement. I believe this time in American history demonstrates that change is possible through the efforts of many diverse peoples. The students will have read, analyzed, and annotated Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and used Writing to Learn prompts centered on other works (poetry, a short story, pictures, and song lyrics) in order to understand the many aspects of effective persuasion.The students will have written their own letters for a real audience (i.e., letter to the editor, principal, school board, etc.) These assignments will culminate in the students orally presenting their arguments.

Today's Activity
Virginia SOLs require that secondary students utilize peer review; however, they may have not participated in peer review for this genre. The lesson today will remind students of the basics and prepare them to evaluate and analyze one another's persuasive works. After the short Power Point presentation, I will model the persuasive peer review process. As a class, we will apply these principles. The goals for this activity are for the students to identify the argument and its thesis statement, evaluateevidence/support, look for organization, a sense of audience, and syntax. If these elements are not considered effective, they are to make suggestions.

Resources
Prior to this lesson, the students will have had lessons on peer review, rhetorical terms and applications, and sentence variation. I will provide them with a worksheet and online resources in order to guide them through the peer review process.

Roger

The students who I will be addressing with this material will be my 12th grade English class, and we are in the midst of a discussion of this great Gothic Romance. We have just begun to discuss the material, and are no more than 1/3 of the way finished (depending on the student.) In this class I will begin by asking the students to take out their "personal notebooks," and to write about a time where they have felt singled out, or isolated. After a brief (5 min) free write, I will ask if there are any who wish to share their tale. Hopefully, I will have at least one taker. I will use this to segue into a brief discussion of this issue of "othering" in "Frankenstein, especially pertaining to "the Creature." I will reflect on how difficult it must be to have one's entire existence have no single act of kindness or sympathy. After all, all the "Monster" claims to want is for one person to act kindly towards him, or at least something other than run away from or beat him. But then, I must pause and wonder, is it possible that even then, might the "Creature" be incapable of reciprocating such kindness? Is it possible that he truly is the evil monster that everyone else seems to see him as? Even if he were to have a friend, would it curb his bloodthirsty ways? I wish to end this discussion with another freewrite in which students discuss a time in which it might be wise to sinlge out another individual based on his appearance/actions... Thus will I hope to leave the students with no clear answer, and perhaps more confused than when the lecture began. Such is my goal, but its purpose is that the students can begin to look for all the possible sides to any argument, even ones which, if you'll pardon the term, are so black and white.