This lesson encouraged students to place fiction and nonfiction texts in concert with one another--applying their skills in literary analysis to improve their understanding of real-world events. Students took right to this application and were excited to engage in such weighty topics. Ultimately this lesson led to our most lively discussion of the year (so far!). Look below for a full annotated lesson plan.
Something I like to emphasize in my classroom is the way our understanding of literature can inform our understanding of the real world and vice versa. I am currently teaching Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, a young adult sci-fi novel in which a young boy is trained to be a military genius in order to defend Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Students have really enjoyed the book, but, in getting swept up in the exciting plot and rooting for Ender's success in Battle School, had perhaps not grasped the situation in which Ender is struggling: he was taken from his family at age 6 and forced into the life of a soldier. In order to problematize this reading, I had students read this article concerning the issue of child soldiers in the Islamic State and around the world. This lesson encouraged students to place fiction and nonfiction texts in concert with one another--applying their skills in literary analysis to improve their understanding of real-world events. Students took right to this application and were excited to engage in such weighty topics. Ultimately this lesson led to our most lively discussion of the year (so far!). Look below for a full annotated lesson plan.
2 Comments
Becky
11/27/2015 08:02:50 pm
I am selfishly pleased that you chose this lesson to annotate because I observed the lesson before this one and was curious to see how it all worked out. It sounds like it was a great lesson and I wish I came a day later. Your comments are solid throughout. You are really onto something by bringing the controversies of the text into modern light. I wonder, would the s’s have reacted as strongly to the article without reading EG? Would they react so strongly to EG without the article? It’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship and leading them to process, dare show passion about, one and/or the other is a great accomplishment. Thanks for sharing.
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becky
11/27/2015 08:19:11 pm
PPS. I can't remember if we ever discussed the following connections that can help s's further develop their experience with a text. They are text to self, text to text and text to world. The first two are two in your repertoire, keep en eye to using the final one as your s's now have EG and their summer reading as shared reading experiences. What connections might they make from these texts to your future ones?
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