Agenda
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Agenda:
Reflections:
I apologize for not posting yet this year. My educational responsibilities are growing as my dissertation proposal rapidly approaches. As a results, posts may be briefer and less frequent than in previous years, but I still want to share what the class is working on! So...this year, I'm teaching a broader course on critical literacies and activism through a feminist lens, but specifically designed to include more axes of identity in the curriculum. During the first weeks of school, students chose an article to analyze from this list as a diagnostic. We discussed "scout mindset" and bias using this helpful TED Talk and the story of Red Riding Hood from the wolf's PoV. We also examined statistical bias in the media. We also discussed digital citizenship for several days, which included questions like these (taken from Common Sense media lessons) as students received their own iPads this year. The first semester of the course will look at the treatment of various social groups in society. I began with immigrants as a social group, as it is something every student could relate to personally. Here's what we did for the mini unit:
Reflections
Below, are the questions I asked students in an end-of-the-year circle as well as their various responses in no particular order or ranking. I tried to bold the most common responses.
Students had a total of 6 hours in class to work on this paper. 1 hour to read, 1 hour to create 4 organizing sentences and share with the class, and 4 hours of independent writing/typing. Here are some of the strongest papers! For 10th and 11th grade students relatively new to both feminism and the English language, I am impressed! I hope to use these as examples of strong Regents essays for part 2 (the argumentative essay), as many students have expressed a desire to see models of strong papers as a way to improve their argumentative essay writing skills.
The final unit for this course is an argumentative essay, which will prepare student for the CCLS ELA Regents in June and also serve as a PBAT (portfolio piece) for their culminating presentation to move to the next grade. The question I chose was: Should prostitution be a crime? I chose this because I think it's important to have students be able to pick either side and still present a feminist argument, which is difficult for many gender studies topics. Agenda:
Reflections
Last week, students performed their poems in front of an audience of 100 students and teachers! It went very well, and we recorded most of it. Unfortunately, due to some technical difficulties, I may not be able to post them all on here as I imagined. I may be able to eventually, but it will take some work to properly edit and enhance the mic quality, etc. So, in the meantime, I am posting their final poems in text form as well as the rubric to grade them on the written and performative aspects of this project. Enjoy! These weeks followed the same format, so I'll post them together. Mondays, Danilo from Magic Box came to help students make videos that will accompany the group poems (and be played behind the performers). Tuesdays and Wednesdays were group choice days, in which students could work on their videos or practice performing their poetry. The second half of Wednesdays, students performed their poems to the class and received feedback. Thursdays, Alli (our guidance counselor) continued with her college and career readiness lessons. Agenda
Reflections
The creative project at the end of this unit (essentially a new unit, but based on the content from the last one) is an original, student-written group poem, which will be performed onstage in front of a student-made video. In the first week of the unit, students combined original poems they wrote in English class (based on the themes & events from their literature circle books) into a group poem! Also, starting this week, every Thursday, our guidance counselor and college counselor (a former graduate of our school & current college student) will come into the class to help students begin thinking about college. Agenda
Reflections
This week, we mixed things up a bit because routines were becoming a little boring to some students. Also, I wanted a chance to be able to talk more deeply about a few key social issues the books addressed. We tried an activity that may become a new staple in the class - Reality Check! Agenda
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June 2018
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