Teaching Short Stories in the High School English Classroom

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Jan 032012
 

Themes

One way to build interest in short stories is to organize them by theme and explore those common themes in each of the stories you choose to tackle in class. If you spend a lot of time teaching the structure of short stories – plot, setting, mood, tone, characters, dialogs, etc. – this can get boring very quickly. Students grasp these concepts in no time. However, when you entice them to get into a story with a theme they care about and can relate to, you’re more likely to hold their attention. For example, if you read, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “A Pair of Tickets” by Amy Tan, “Desirée’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, and “Eveline” by James Joyce, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner etc. You can focus on the common themes in these stories such as women’s roles throughout history, the function of families, love and loss, the function of communities, and the idea of home. Students will have personal connections to all of these themes, and will therefore be able to connect with the stories and synthesize their personal experiences with the text at hand.

Anticipation Builders

Before you’re reading a short story, especially if you are focusing on a particular theme, it is a good idea to get students thinking about their personal ideas. This creates anticipation for the story. If the students think they can connect to the work of literature, they will be more likely to enjoy reading it, and the information will be more likely to stick with them. A quick anticipation builder is having the students write journal entries that ask the students to reflect on something that relates to some aspect of the story. Be sure to have students share their journals in class if they feel comfortable. It’s good for other students to hear what the journals are all about.

Stop and Write

If you have to read an entire story in class rather than sending it home to be read for homework, ‘Stop and Write’ is a great idea for an activity to be sure students are on track. ‘Stop and Write’ is exactly what it sounds like: you read the story aloud with the students, and at certain points in the text, you stop and ask them a question. Instead of discussing the answer, though, they have to write their answers down. This is also a great way to be sure even the shy students are participating and understanding what is going on in the text. Even if a student doesn’t want to share his or her answer aloud, they can write it down for you to read later. This also works really well to keep students on track while reading.

Rewrites

Students love to write creatively. It is easier for them than writing an analytical paper. If you have students rewrite stories while changing a specific piece such as the point of view, setting, or one plot point, this can not only bring out their creative side, but also help them understand and analyze the importance of these elements as they are being changed. If you allow your students to be creative, they will connect with the story on a deeper level.

 Posted by at 5:21 am  Tagged with:

What are Jigsaw Activities?

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Jan 022012
 

What are Jigsaw Activities?

Jigsaw activities are exactly what they sound like. You break students into groups and have each group read a specific article or piece of text, and they are responsible for teaching the rest of the class their segment. This can also be done without groups, if you have enough pieces of the text for students to tackle a segment individually. Hopefully, when you’re finished, the whole class then has the complete picture of what you wanted them to learn without having to read the entire text or all the articles in the unit.

How to Make it Work in the Classroom

If you grew up in the 90’s, you remember watching Uncle Jesse and Joey try to do this same thing with a book they were reading, only to have it fail miserably because each didn’t understand the half the other was supposed to report back on. The lesson here is that trying to cheat by doing only part of the work will always result in failure. However, when you are facilitating a jigsaw activity in your classroom, you can make it successful by requiring each group to complete specific activities relating to their segment of the text. This can be a worksheet, answering several questions, completing a video project – the possibilities are endless and these are just a few. When the groups have completed their tasks, they must present their findings to the class. At this point, it is critical to have the students take notes. Since they did not read their own section of the text, they need to have something to reference in their notes.

End of Unit Activities

After all the groups have presented, it’s a good idea to have an end of the unit activity ready to go to check the students’ understanding of the topic. You can create a quiz based on the students’ presentations and have the entire class take the quiz. You can also have students create their own quiz questions to test the students who have been listening to their presentation. It’s also possible to have students complete a project that has one or more elements from each group’s presentation. Again, the possibilities are endless, but it is a good idea to follow through with an end of the unit activity just to be sure the students were paying attention to all the presentations.

What does it Teach?

Jigsaw activities not only cover the required material of the classroom, but also teach much more than just reading comprehension and writing. Jigsaw activities require students to present information in such a way that the other students can understand what they are saying. This is much different than just giving a presentation or speech, because the students are not required to just talk at an audience, but rather teach the audience something and be sure they understand what has been taught. This is an important life skill, especially when you consider most jobs in the world require someone to teach something at some point in the workday.

 Posted by at 5:17 am  Tagged with:

Studying Poetry in the Classroom

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Jan 012012
 

Teaching the Form

One of the most important things to teach when you are teaching poetry is about the form of the poem you are reading. Even free verse poems that seemingly lack a form have an art to them. Poetry is different from prose in that there are lines, and when the poet writes a poem, he or she pays careful attention to those lines. Very often, important phrases end at the line, or poets include important words at the end of the line. This can help draw attention to the words and phrases that are used in the poem, and can help illuminate the meaning of the poem.

Most Important Word

By asking students what they think the most important word in the poem is, you are asking them to think about the poet’s word choice. This is actually a very difficult question for students to answer because usually they want to choose a whole phrase. By asking them to pick one word, you are forcing them to look at the whole poem through a critical eye. If they are stuck and need help, you can always give them hints. Important words can be repeated over and over within the poem. Repetition is always a signal of an important word. Other important words can embody the entire theme or message of the poem, or can be a word that the students like the sound or meaning of. Most importantly, remind the students that, as long as they can explain their choice, there are no wrong answers.

Coffeehouse Readings

Always read poetry aloud in class. This can help students understand the poem better. Poetry was also meant to be read aloud. You can make this fun, too, by setting up your classroom like a coffeehouse poetry reading. Have the students snap their fingers after each reading, instead of clapping their hands. Add some lamps to create a coffeehouse feel when the lights are turned off, and put a fake microphone at the front of the room for students to stand up and read into. This will get the students listening and enjoying poetry just for the sound of it, which can lead to really great discussions about the content and how the poem was read.

Found Poems

Found poems are a great way to have students dive into writing their own poetry. For some students, writing a poem can be daunting if anything goes. With found poems, have the students “find” words and phrases in magazines and newspapers. Have them cut out what they find and glue it on a piece of paper in the form of a poem. By giving students something to start with – in this case, words already printed in a magazine – you’ve taken away the fear of creating and sharing something new and personal.

 Posted by at 5:12 am  Tagged with:
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