The movie adaptation (at left) is just that: an adaptation. It follows the book with a few minor changes. In the middle is a mass market paperback I’ve had forever; at right is the class set hardcover my students are reading.
My Novels class is reading this over the break
My Novels class is currently reading (or supposed to be reading — wink wink) this classic novel by Norman Maclean. I’m reading it again alongside them and this morning I arrived at page forty. It’s only 110 pages long, so it’s a quick read.
If you haven’t read this novella, do; it’s a breath of fresh air in this time of social distancing. (And sidenote: If you’re not into fly-fishing, push through the long, tedious paragraphs about casting, fish psychology and other specific aspects of the sport; however, don’t dismiss these purposeful passages either. Maclean uses fly-fishing metaphorically to tell his story.)
Based between Helena and Missoula, Montana, much of the action takes place on the Big Blackfoot and the smaller Elkhorn. The story shows the struggles of a young Montanan named Paul Maclean through the eyes of his older brother, Norman. The brothers share idyllic childhoods as the sons of a Presbyterian minister. In telling about his brother’s adult life that revolves around journalism, betting, alcohol, and fly-fishing, Norman shares his own struggle to take care of those we love but don’t ever quite understand.
Don’t miss the 1992 PG-rated movie adaptation. It’s also an escape into the great outdoors and the depths of family compassion. Directed by Robert Redford (read my post on Robert Redford Dessert here), the 1992 movie stars Craig Scheffer as Norman Maclean, a very young Brad Pitt in the role of Paul, Tom Skerritt as the boys’ father, and Brenda Blethyn, as their mother.
That’s all I’ll say for now, but know that this novel takes you out on great northern rivers, along Montana roads, into dark and dusty speak-easies, and into Presbyterian church pews where a message of love and forgiveness is extolled.
This is educator and innovator Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist.
Happy Friday Eve!
This is a quick pic of Austin Kleon’s book,Steal Like An Artist. In this book, Kleon, the inventor of black-out poetry, discusses creativity, the values of unplugging from technology to create, and tips for producing more.
He offers up some solid ideas that I found particularly helpful. Here are two:
Don’t throw any of yourself away. If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life.
I love this idea! I often feel like I have no focus with my writing. For example, on my personal blog, I write about travel destinations and parenting. I also have some personal narratives and short stories along with some more serious education-related essays that I’ve reposted from this blog. But that’s not all! I’ve also posted three random reviews of Ed Sheeran concerts I’ve seen. I’ve often thought Wow, I need to focus. Reading Kleon’s advice to keep cultivating all these parts of my writing was reassuring. I need to trust that all these topics have a reason for being explored. This next tip is closely related:
2. Don’t worry about unity from piece to piece. What unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it.
Ahhh! That’s so good to hear! To know that there are benefits to writing about myriad topics. Again, I love how Kleon believes branching out and cultivating a variety of works is perfectly okay. That’s a good thing that someone with diverse interests like me needs to hear.
Thanks for stopping by! Kleon’s book is worth a look-see, not only for your own use, but for use in the classroom to cultivate and encourage creativity. Follow my blog for more posts about teaching ELA in a high school classroom. Here’s a recent post: Treasured Object Poems: A favorite poetry activity for all grades
Teachers stack idea cards into like piles at one of the sessions I attended at Write-to-Learn 2020. This was part of another critical literacy activity that I’ll share with you soon.
This classic organizer worked for me at the 2020 Write-to-Learn Conference
One of those tools is the Alphabet Brainstorming Chart shown below. Here’s a link to a similar handout that’s ready to use.
How to use this organizer:
Find a new topic you need your students to explore. “Critical literacy” was the new topic used to demonstrate how to use this chart in the classroom by our presenters, Dr. Lara Dieckmann, a teacher at Harrisburg (Mo.) R-VIII School District and Dr. Christy Goldsmith, assistant director of the Campus Writing Program at the University of Missouri. Critical literacy was a term I knew nothing about; however, it was still a topic I could still ponder, as in “I don’t know what critical literacy is, but I think I know what it might be about.”
Divide students into groups. Choose group size based on your needs.
Tell students to think about their topic and write a word or phrase that they can connect with the topic — one for each letter of the alphabet. You can see the words I connected to critical literacy in the photo above.
This activity encourages students to evaluate what they already know or think they know and enter their thinking into the squares.
Let students talk among their groups and share their ideas or words. This activity is about more than prior knowledge. It’s also about sharing ideas and getting kids talking about the topic at hand.
When students and groups are finished filling in the chart, go around the room and share out and discuss what students know about the new topic.
I like this chart much better than KWL charts, which have always seemed so boring to me. It has a game-like feel to it. And besides, with a KWL chart it’s really hard to come up with things you want to know about a new topic.
If I had been given a KWL chart to fill out about critical literacy, I would have been lost. With this ABC chart, I was able to come up with more ideas to discuss than I thought I could. I can see how it can be a confidence-booster with kids. It was also good to hear other ideas from my group members.
And finally, the best thing about this ABC Chart is you can make it a game!
Switch it up by…
Giving a prize (or just designating a winner) to the first group that fills in all the squares.
Giving a prize to the group that fills in the most squares in a designated number of minutes.
Giving a prize to the group that fills in “X” with the best phrase that fits the topic.
Sort It! Map It! Exploring Critical Literacy
I received this handout during a session called “Sort It! Map It! Exploring Critical Literacy, Pedagogy, & Writing Process” taught by Dieckmann and Goldsmith.
The presenters readily acknowledged the original source of this classic organizer.
I’m looking forward to using this organizer with my seniors in a few weeks when we begin our Medieval Age unit in British Literature. I’ll let you know how that goes in an upcoming post.
Thanks for reading again this week! Have you ever used this chart? Do tell! Feel free to share your experience in the comments. Follow my blog to catch my follow-up post on how the chart works in my classroom. Here’s a link to another post inspired by a session at last year’s Write to Learn conference.
After completing their Beowulf unit, seniors charted the epic poem onto a Hero’s Journey poster. Following these posters, students chose a story (novel, short story, movie) to chart in a similar way, but this time using Google Slide Presentations. With college and careers on the horizon, this project was quite likely the last time they would break out the markers and glue sticks to show their learning. That’s kinda sad, honestly.
These articles are intended to round out the ideas presented by the novella
This winter, my junior English students have just finished reading The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and are beginning to develop their cumulative essays on the novella. To prepare for that, and to build more background knowledge about the novel and Ernest Hemingway, last week students broke into groups and read one article.
After reading the article as a group (however they wanted to accomplish the reading — whether one person read the entire article or each took turns — was fine with me), they gave a short presentation to the rest of their class and discussed the four to five major points or ideas their respective article discussed.
It was a “jigsaw” style of reading the articles. My hope is that students will find the articles helpful as they determine and then develop their individual topics for their essays, which require the novel plus one other source to reference.
Here are links to the articles I gave to each group:
Fassler focuses on the recurring motif of the lions on the beach laced throughout the book. What do these memories mean to Santiago? This article interestingly dwells on the idea of memory and how our earliest memories never really leave us throughout our lives.
Reimann brings up five points of discussion in this article. The most intriguing one to me was that “some things are meant to remain a mystery.” In the book, Santiago debates the idea of whether killing the marlin was a sin or not. In fact, Hemingway never resolves this issue for the reader and this question is one that remains with the reader long after finishing the book. I like how Reimann gives validity to the idea that authors aren’t required to tie up all the loose ends in their work. Sometimes bringing these questions to light is enough.
This is actually Chapter 14 from the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, a fun read that examines literary techniques and quandaries (such as the prevalence of implied symbolism) in an easy-to-read style. This is the longest article; give it to your most advanced readers. The book discusses scenes from the book that are highly symbolic. Students will get the author’s point that symbolism, while highly subjective can also be quite obviously implied by authors. What readers do with those symbols is what makes reading fun, spiritually challenging, and most of all, an individualized experience.
Our presentations on these articles were informal and I required that listeners take notes on the four to five major points that each group discussed about their article. I wanted them to write enough notes to be familiar with each text in, so the articles could be accessed later as students delve into their chosen topics more deeply.
Thanks for reading again this week! I’ll keep you posted on their The Old Man and the Sea culminating essays. With all the recent snow days, it has taken us longer than I initially planned to finish this short novella. Up next: more Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Frost.
Do you have any ideas for other articles to pair with The Old Man and the Sea? If so, please leave a comment and share your ideas.
Nonfiction is definitely my thing. Yes, I love novels and short stories, but nonfiction really captivates me. And I guess it’s because I truly believe that life is stranger than fiction. As a result, I’m starting to consider which nonfiction books I’d like to requisition for 2020-2021.
Pictured above, Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, presents an honest look at success and how it is achieved. I’m reading about six pages at a time to my elective composition class as a starter activity. My plan is to read through chapter two, and then assess whether to order for next year.
My students, mainly juniors and seniors, are engaged with the ideas in the book. Based on their written responses to some text-based questions, I know they are not only engaged, but are absorbing, considering, and applying the ideas.
Here are a few interesting lines from the 285-page book:
“In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”
Gladwell presents the arresting argument that success has less to do with ambition and intelligence and more to do with culture, family, and one’s upbringing. In the first chapters, by examining the birth dates of Canadian hockey players, Gladwell shows readers proof that there is more to success than hard work and talent.
These concepts caught a few of my students off guard quite honestly, and it goes against many extolled views about success.
The book is divided into two sections:
Part One: Opportunity
Part Two: Legacy
Within these two parts, Gladwell discusses commonly held beliefs about success and then follows that up with specific stories of outliers… “people whose achievements fall outside normal experience,” according to the back cover copy.
In addition to a reading guide and nine discussion questions in the back of the book, there are several Outliers products on Teachers Pay Teachers that I may or may not utilize. I would like to create some of my own materials for this book, but that will obviously happen after I make my decision to order it or not.
And, of course, the jury’s still out on Outliers; however, I’m thinking I’ll probably give this book the go-ahead next month when we start filling out those precious requisition forms.
Have you ever taught Outliers? Thoughts? Suggestions? Feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading again this week! I’ll be focusing on Douglass and Manhunt in some upcoming posts. And, of course, I also plan to requisition some new fiction. I’ll post soon on those as well. Follow my blog to catch these future posts!
The British Lit textbook my school uses alongside Hemingway’s book.
Lots of planning comin’ up!
Now that the new year has started, I thought I would write a short post about the units I’m starting with my juniors and seniors next week.
My junior classes will begin Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea on Wednesday and my senior classes will start Beowulfon the same day. (In addition, my Composition class will begin brainstorming ideas for their I-Search papers on the same day, while my Novels classes begin their independent reading books.)
These lit units are the first ones of the school year for both grades. Last fall, we wrote memoirs, poetry, short story analysis essays, and a variety of pieces for Writer’s Workshop. We also wrote poetry and entered writing contests, such as the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Of course, we also read. Between nonfiction articles for Article of the Week assignments and various books we “tasted” on First Chapter Fridays, we did expose ourselves to new reading. Still, in-depth and extended study of selected literature was not on the menu.
Until now.
I’m excited to experience these literature studies with my students. I’ve read The Old Man and the Sea before, but not Beowulf. And to be honest, I’m a little embarrassed that I haven’t read this foundational text before. In fact, I’m not sure how I missed reading it until now.
I’m fairly well prepared to get started with these new units, but at the same time, I know that teaching them will be challenging and probably dominate my planning time.
It’s quite a handful to create daily lessons for two new texts. Compound that with the fact that at my small rural high school, I’m the only English teacher for juniors and seniors. That has its positives (I have autonomy and choice when planning), but it also has its negatives. For example, while I do have a general curriculum to follow, I do not have unit specific materials beyond the textbooks and novels.
As such, I’ll be creating and designing lessons as I go. Thank goodness for ready-made unit plans, which provide me a basic framework that I can tweak and adjust for the future.
I’ll update you on how these new units progress in some future posts.
Thanks for reading again this week! What are you gearing up for now that the holidays are over? Feel free to leave a comment and follow my blog to catch those follow-up posts.
