Brit Lit Curriculum Re-imagined

This year, I completely revamped my British Literature Honors curriculum. After years of wrestling with students to read books that were of no interest to them, I decided to take a step back and evaluate what is really important - what are the main objectives of my curriculum? How could those be met in a way that is more engaging to students? My curriculum was already project-based and tech-heavy. What more could I do?

I began by removing the unfirom required reading and expanding upon a popular past project. I chose fifteen authors from the British Literature genre, valued for their many contributions to the literary canon.

J.R.R Tolkien - The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Silmarilian
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Tale of Two Cities, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House
Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, The Woodlanders, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure
Bronte Sisters - Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, Villete, Tenant of Wildfell Hall
CS Lewis - Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces
George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, Adam Bede
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
PG Wodehouse - Jeeves & Wooster series, Blandings Castle series
EM Forster - A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Passage to India, Howard’s End, The Longest Journey
C.S. Forester - Hornblower saga, The African Queen
Elizabeth Gaskell - Cranford, Wives & Daughters, North & South, Ruth, Mary Barton
HG Wells - The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox

The first week of school, Brit Lit students researched and then took turns picking authors. No two students had the same author. Students were assigned to read 900+ pages of their author's works before the end of January. Then, we jumped into our schedule: 

Mondays - Journal
Tuesdays - Discussion
Wednesdays - Work Day
Thursdays - Work Day
Fridays - Discussion

Homework:
Reading Logs - Report on 50+ pages of your reading. Give a rating (1-5) and en explanation for that rating. (due every Friday)
Vocab Logs - Find three challenging words from your reading. Give the definition, the sentence from your book where the word is used, and your own sentence. (due every Tuesday)

On Mondays, students journal roughly 200-300 words on various topics related to their books. Each journal entry starts with a one paragraph summary of the student's reading, and then ends with a one paragraph discussion of a literary topic, using examples from their books. Students have blogged on flat vs round characters, foils, and archetypes. All journaling takes place on student blogs. I've had my student's work quoted on other respected blogs - how's that for rigorous, authentic writing! 

Tuesdays and Fridays we have class discussions. On these days, I will propose a topic and students respond, giving examples from the books they are currently reading. Using this method, all of my students are exposed to a wide variety of books and authors. Students passionately defend their authors and become the classroom experts on their author's point of view. One of my favorite discussions involved the class attempting to rank the literary value of the books they were currently reading. Here's the diagram they finally settled upon by the end of the class. 

Wednesdays and Thursdays are class work days. Students use these days for on-going work projects, due at the end of most months.  

September: Author Biography Presentations: Students created and presented a four-minute Ignite-style presentation on the author.  
October: 10 page research papers: Students chose a critical lens and examined their author's work critically.
November/December: Author Skits: Students work in small groups, collaboratively writing a skit in Google Drive. Skits are memorized, presented, and filmed mid-December. Each student pretends to be their author.
January: 10 page short stories. Students write a short story, as if they are their chosen author. They mimic the author's style and point of view, writing a believable story that could pass as belonging to their author.

Feedback
We are two months into the school year, and in my opinion this was the right move to make for the British Literature students. Students truly have become experts on their chosen author. The discussions are informed and it's obvious that students are reading (without any need for standard tests). 

Sample Student Work:

Author Biography Slides

Critical Lens Research Paper:


Student Blog Post
Author Skits (coming soon)

Short Stories (coming soon)

2013 Lit Maker Project

What is the purpose of literature?

Literature is so many things, but one very important thing I want my students to capture from their reading is the joy of discovery and inspiration. Literature allows us to explore new worlds, and prepares us to tackle our own world.

In this vein, I designed the 2013 Lit Maker Project for my tenth grade honors students. Perhaps you've heard of Make Magazine or the Maker Faires - these people are passionate about trying new things and pushing the boundaries of their creativity. While preparing the literature selection for this quarter, I saw many correlations between the author (Thor Heyerdahl) and Makers.

Kon-Tiki is the story of a man with an idea. Is it possible that ancient people traversed the Pacific Ocean on rafts? Thor Heyerdahl's research was not taken seriously, so he set out to prove that it could in fact be done with five other men. Had they ever built rafts before? No. Survived at sea for months? Nope. Did that stop them? Definitely not!

Today's gifted students can easily forget the joy of literature. So often they are bogged down with unlocking the "true purpose" of the text. I designed my project to allow my students to take inspiration from literature, paralleling Thor's own intrepid spirit.

To assess student reading, I allowed students to complete the book at their own pace, completing online quizzes at their leisure.

To help my students understand what I am looking for in this project, we watched Dale Dougherty's TED Talk on the importance of being a Maker.



Afterwards, my students played with my son's Makey Makey (video below of my son controlling the computer with oranges using the Makey Makey).



Then, I brought out Legos and invited my students to play. When I ask my students to be creative, particularly honors students, there is sometimes fear in their eyes. How will I be graded? What exactly do you want? I prefer open-ended types of projects because I believe it pushes students to reach new heights, but I know how scary that can be for someone who just wants to know what check boxes they need to check to get their A. Enter the Legos. I don't know what it is about Legos, but once the box is open, they must be played with. I've yet to meet a student who doesn't enjoy the tactile building process. I use Legos to help students get over their fear of creativity - thirty minutes with Legos, and project ideas start flowing.

The assignment:
You are a Maker. Design your own project where you create some thing... something unusual, something crafty... something different. Use this opportunity to explore your interests. This is your project, and your opportunity to create something special. You will have two months to complete this project, including all Mondays and Wednesdays in-class. You are responsible for creating a proposal and a timeline for completion.

Project Examples:
Sew a dress out of unusual materials
Create a robot that turns the pages of a book

I am using the Make the Future scholarship criteria to assess these projects. This will be a test run for many of you - if you find that you enjoyed this project, you can create a new project in a few years and submit it for the scholarship.

You will each create a 2-3 minute video including the following
- Title or Name of Project
- Inspiration for project
- Description or summary
- Purpose
- Procedures or process in creation
- Skills needed to make project
- Design challenges
- Demonstration or visualization of project

You will be assessed on:
- Project creativity
- Project innovation
- Mastery of skills
- Use of materials/applications
- Project design
- Project presentation

In addition, we will be using some of our writing Thursdays to write blog posts reflecting on the project, research related articles and information applicable to your project, and collaborate and comment on your fellow classmates' projects. 

Common Core Literacy Standards:
10.RL.6 Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature. 
10.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. 
10.W.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 
10.SL.1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, text, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
10.SL.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
10.SL.5 Make strategic use of digital media in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest. 
 

Nearpod Review

I was introduced to Nearpod a week or so ago by a colleague, and then I participated in a webinar to make sure that I understood all the basics.

Nearpod is a presentation distribution web & iPad app. Teachers use the web app to create interactive presentations that they can then control with their iPads. Students use the free iPad or iPod app to watch and participate in the presentation.

To add media to your Nearpod presentation, import images or PDFs. Then, add interactive slides. Here are the options:

The poll option looks like this:

Unlike Socrative, with Nearpod teachers do have the option to add images to the presentation. This is helpful - especially for math and science classes.

The Q&A option is like a mini-quiz. I wish there was an option here for free response. A lot of times I have an open ended question for my students or an exit ticket. This option would be well-suited for a free response question. **see comments below**

The Quiz is similar to the Q&A section but allows for many multiple choice questions to be asked at once.

The video option is where teachers can upload videos that are no more than 3 minutes long and sized under 10 GB. Videos must also be mp4 format, which is not a problem if you use a youtube downloader, but can be difficult if you need to convert video files you already have in storage. I found it easiest to redownload in the format I needed (most of my video files are .flv for Smart Notebook compatibility). When the teacher starts a video slide, all students see and hear the video on their own devices.

The Draw It option is an interesting interactive. Students are given a blank page or a background image to draw with a limited palette.

Once the presentation is finished and published, the real fun begins. Teachers use their iPads to control the flow. Once they open the Student Nearpod App, students only see on their iPad or iPod screens what the teacher wants them to see. To move to the next slide, simply swipe.

The bottom slider allows teachers to preview all the slides in the presentation, and jump to any slide at any time. Tap "Share" to push an individual slide to the student display.

When switching to an interactive slide, like a Quiz, the teacher sees the results in real time, listed by student name (students login at the beginning of the presentation). At the top of the result page, a pie chart shows the overall distribution of correct answers. Individual answers and overall results can be shared with the class (tap share at the top). For example, on a Draw It slide, if a student does a particularly interesting drawing that you want to share with the class, tap the drawing and share it. The name of the student is not shared with the class.

If you look at the slide above, you will notice on my presentation that no students are logged in. This is indicated by the number next in the top left corner next to the shadow profile. You will also notice that this is a fraction. Once all your students have logged in, if one student leaves the presentation that top number decreases by one and turns red. This feature allows you to see if a student is off-task. If you click the number, you will see which student has left the presentation.

After the presentation is over, email yourself the results of all assessments by clicking the bar graph in the top fixed bar. Your assessment results can also be accessed on the Nearpod website.

Right now, Nearpod is free for teachers to create up to 10 presentations at a time. I still have not received information on how much it costs to upgrade to an unlimited amount of presentations. I would like this option so I can prepare presentations ahead of time. Nearpod also has a library of presentations already created that teachers can immediately use - these do not count against your 10 presentation limit.

Positives:
- Interactive
- Slick Display
- Real-time polling and quizzing
- Drawing feature

Things to work on:
- Free response feature **see comments** - there is a way to do this
- Randomize quiz questions and answers to help avoid cheating
- Share Nearpod presentations with other teachers

Overall, I'm impressed with this product and I'm looking forward to using it! If you have any questions, I suggest signing up for Nearpod's beginner webinar.

Ignite Classroom Version

As I can't travel to San Fransisco this summer, I'm following ISTE's conference on twitter and G+. Already I'm seeing posts and tweets about Ignite, so I thought I'd share my experience using it in the classroom.

This year I used the format with both my seniors and my sophomores. For my senior British Literature Honors class, I had the students choose a British poet and create 5 minute presentation with the slides on a timer (20 seconds per slide). The students were confused about the format, so to kick things off, I did my own presentation. This helped tremendously.

We had a lot of fun with these presentations and I was impressed with the quality. There is a lightheartedness to this type of presentation that keeps them fun, yet relevant. 

For my 10th graders, I decided to use an abbreviated form of the Ignite format. In this case, the students each had 3 minutes and 15 seconds per slide for a total of 12 slides. Again, I gave a sample presentation as a kick-off. This time, I limited my students to no more than 10 words per slide and also introduced the concept of hand-drawn slides.

Naturalist Presentation (For whatever reason, Blogger won't let me embed both presentations in one post)

The sophomores completed a project at the end of the year looking into career options. We started out with a fun aptitude test and then students picked a career to research. First, my students interviewed someone in their chosen field. Then the students wrote a 5-7 page paper exploring the history of the job, job requirements and expectations, preparation for the job, and at least three related college programs. The final project was the presentation where they summed up their findings for the class.

I loved using the abbreviated Ignite format because it kept the presentations short and snappy. Students stuck to the big ideas, and the entire class got a good overview of job options by the time we were done. Even shy students did well because they knew that it was only 3 minutes and the slides would move on with or without them!

All in all, these exercises were enjoyable and I look forward to repeating them next year.