Learning Letter

1. I felt that the book talks were very helpful as a future teacher. I had to look beyond thinking a book was good or not. I had to actually rationalize its use in a classroom and whether or not my students could learn from it. It was also beneficial to hear such a wide variety of books that can be taught. I will definitely use a few of them as teaching tools. The unit plan was very difficult. By the end of it I never wanted to write another EdTPA lesson plan again. However it was very important for me to see how to plan a unit around a book. The book should be used as a tool to teach the critical thinking skills you want your students to acquire. The unit plan definitely helped me to think in this way more often.

2. The most important theories I learned in class were those of critical pedagogy and social justice learning. Both theories encourage teachers to not just teach about literature but to use literature to teach their students about the world. This is the way that my most influential teachers taught me and it seems too have worked. Literature should not be taught in a vacuum, but rather used as a window to access ideas that are applicable to the lives of our students.

3. I look at literature differently now because of this class. I still believe that classic literature is important for students to read and understand, but it should be supplemented with pop culture to give students a reference point to connect with. It is important for our students to feel comfortable in our classrooms. A great way to do this is to connect with them by using pop culture references to help bridge the gap between students and "classic" literature. This is definitely a practice that I will adopt in my classroom.

Night

Night is the story of a Hungarian boy name Eliezer during the Holocaust. He is first moved from his home into the ghettos of his town before finally being taken to the concentration camp, Auschwitz. While there, Eliezer is separated from his family, beaten by other inmates, and subjected to the horrors that were the Nazi party. Eliezer loses his faith, his family, and his humanity before finally being rescued. Eliezer is widely accepted as a stand-in for the author of the book, Elie Wiesel. While the book appears to be fiction, in actuality it is a recounting of Elie’s life and stories during the Holocaust.

When I was in 8^th grade, we read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as our Holocaust book. That story was historical fiction and was a fairly easy read for me then. In my practicum, I found that the 8^th graders I work with are starting Night next week and I am surprised. The main obstacles I see are how much more graphic and intense the scenes are than those in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Even though the obstacles are large, I believe that this is a worthwhile read for students as it presents a more real and emotional experience for students. 

Graphic Novels/ Comic Books in the Classroom

My dad is what could be classified as a comic book geek, and because of this, I’ve grown up around comics and graphic novels. I’m not going to say that I learned how to read with graphic novels, but I definitely spent more time reading comics and graphic novels growing up than typical chapter books. They kept me interested and helped build my visual literacy skills that are so important in today’s world.

For today I read an article from Scholastic about the benefits of comic book and graphic novels for students (Raising Super Readers: The Benefits of Comic Books and Graphic Novels). Comics and graphic novels are often looked down upon because they are viewed as juvenile or not real books, even though they often keep readers more interested than some traditional texts. A lot of parents may not realize that many “classic” stories have been recreated in a graphic novel form including Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and many of Shakespeare’s plays.

The article points out several benefits that students gain from reading graphic novels and comic books including “motivating reluctant readers, inference, memory, sequencing, understanding succinct language, and reading comprehension”. They also point out that graphic novels and comics help students better understand plot development because they can’t speed read through it like a regular book. They have to slow down to look at the images to get a greater sense of what is going on in the story.

Comics and graphic novels are also great tools for children with learning disabilities. Children with Autism can learn how to better identify emotions through the images in graphic novels. Dyslexic students often find it hard to finish a page in a traditional text-only book, but they can feel a sense of accomplishment when they finish a page of a graphic novel which helps to keep them reading.  

Graphic novels and comic books should not be the only form of literature in the classroom, but they shouldn’t be ignored either. They are great tools and can be used in a variety of ways to help students become better readers.

Article Link: http://www.scholastic.com/parents/blogs/scholastic-parents-raise-reader/raising-super-readers-benefits-comic-books-and-graphic-novels

The Masque of the Red Death

Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is the story of a prince, Prospero. A disease, the “Red Death” has plagued his land and killed nearly half of his people. To avoid the disease, he invites 1000 of his friends that are not infected to join him in one of his castles. He then barricades the castle so that no others may enter. He secludes himself from the disease-stricken world. After a while, he throws a masquerade ball and everyone is having a good time. Then enters a man who is dressed in a mask that depicts the effects of the red death. Prospero orders him removed but the people are too scared, including Prospero. Prospero then follows him through the rooms of the house and is presumably killed by the masked intruder. When more people arrive, they find Prospero dead and the masked invader gone.

I think that this would be an excellent story to help teach what symbolism is to young readers. The imagery that Poe uses is so vivid that they could easily see the world he tries to create. It could also be used as an exercise to look at the word choice that Poe uses to create the tone and the mood that he wants.

Obviously, because the plot of the story involves a plague that kills half of the population of the land, some students could be frightened by the content of the story. When I helped teach it in my 7^th grade practicum class, it wasn’t much of a problem.