Expectations


As a member of this Online Book Club, you are expected to post to the book blog at least once per week between now and July 11 -- that's six weeks. You should finish your book before then, and you will meet during the Institute in your groups to extend the discussion and plan how to present the book to the others in the Institute.

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Friday, June 24, 2016

Someone Give Me a Good Example in the English Classroom!

First, let me be clear that I buy into this idea of real-world literacy and PBL and all the other PBL-like instruction (or whatever one wants to call it). I've been dabbling in it myself in my Literature classrooms. Still, every darn good example I read comes from a discipline other than English. Chapter 2 of Real-World Literacies does nothing but frustrate me because, once again, I read examples from biology, or history, and a theater class. Yes, there was an example of an English classroom with a podcast, but honestly, it was weak in my opinion. I so badly want to read about some awesome PBL experiences in the literature classroom -- something other than a podcast or publishing a story or writing a letter to a senator or state representative. Most English teachers I know have been there and done that. Does anyone out there have any good examples of a problem-based unit in the high school literature classroom that has real-world applications aside from those I mentioned above? If so, I would love to hear about it -- in detail. What did you do? How did you do it? What were the specific challenges you faced? Perhaps I should plunge right in myself and then write a book about this process specifically in the literature classroom? :)

1 comment:

  1. Hey Gayle!

    So I did a mini unit on Satire using Jonathan Swift as my main focus. I brought in "A Modest Proposal" and discussed how satire pokes fun at what is going on in the world. This was great because we went back and forth from the 1700s to now, addressing the different issues that were going on and what may have changed (such as the Irish immigrants and the "Building a Wall" platform that Trump wants to do). This was effective! I also had my kids write their own proposals, and address what they thought needed to be.

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