This project unit—a multimedia self-portrait published in digital form—is the capstone of your students' high school careers. It is a chance for them to pause and reflect on where they've been, where they're going, and who they are as a person. Students will reflect on what they want others to know about them: what they want their message to be and what types of media they might use to convey that message. Students will have the opportunity to express themselves in many different formats—through writing, of course, but also through other media of their choosing. Students will be able to convey your message through visual art, photography, a graphic novel, audio, poetry, or video—practically any type of media they want!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students will complete a multimedia self-portrait, capturing important aspects of the essence of themselves.
Students will contribute one chapter from their multimedia self-portrait to a class anthology.
Students will present one chapter from their multimedia self-portrait to the class.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

How is late adolescence a moment of internal and external change?
What are the most important qualities of your character—past, present, and future?
How can you portray these key aspects of yourself using multimedia?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, students will take the third in a series of three Cold Write assessments in the narrative genre. The Benchmark Assessment (Cold Write) is an unassisted and unrevised piece of writing with the purpose of providing a quick gauge of the student’s mastery of the characteristics of a given genre. Today’s Benchmark Assessment (Cold Write) measures and provides a benchmark of students’ mastery of narrative writing. Then, they’ll consider the choices artists make when deciding how to portray someone. They’ll also do web research to explore different types of self-portraits.

Why is adolescence a moment of change? How do teenagers experience change in themselves and their surroundings? Students will explore viewing change through five lenses: community, persons, body, events, and choices. Then they’ll look at website-creation or portfolio platforms they can use to publish their projects.

In this 5-day unit, students will explore the topic of love. After reading six poems from writers in the 16th and 17th centuries, they will decide which poet had a better idea than the others about how to express love to a young woman.

The laws that govern and the social norms that regulate society are not always fair, legal, moral, or ethical. What is a person to do about all this injustice? What are the hazards of righting injustices or changing social norms? And what are the dangers of doing nothing?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate Antigone, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and Pygmalion.
Students write a literary analysis showing the effect of social class or the law on a character’s life.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

How do social class and legal institutions shape literary characters’ lives (and presumably our lives)?
How does social class affect a person in dealing with the law (protect a person, hurt a person)?
How is social class determined in America and in other places in the world?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, students will continue reading, annotating, and discussing Pygmalion. Then students will reread and focus on the “at-home” episode in act 3.

The purpose of this second Benchmark Assessment (Cold Write) is to determine what students know about informational writing. Students will respond to a writing prompt, and you will score results as a measure of progress in subsequent assessments. Then students will continue the discussion of Hardy’s poem. They’ll also resume reading, writing about, and discussing Pygmalion.

In this lesson, you'll learn about the requirements for a Character Analysis Essay that will be due at the end of the unit. Then you'll continue reading, annotating, and discussing Pygmalion.In this lesson, students learn about the requirements for a Character Analysis Essay that will be due at the end of the unit. Then they will continue reading, annotating, and discussing Pygmalion.

In this lesson, students will resume reading, annotating, discussing, and writing about Pygmalion. In particular, they’ll focus on a conversation between Professor Higgins and Alfred Doolittle.

In this lesson, students continue reading, annotating, and discussing Pygmalion. Students will focus on Liza’s anger toward Higgins and Doolittle’s remarks about America.

In this lesson, students review the events of act 3 in Pygmalion. Then students write about social class issues in the play.

In this lesson, students write about and discuss how Shaw’s play deals with issues of social class. Then students will meet with their Independent Reading Group about their books.

Lesson OverviewIn this lesson, students will read Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Ruined Maid,” and work in small groups to paraphrase sentences in the poem. They will also begin to draw connections between the poem and Pygmalion.

In this lesson, students read and discuss two poems and their authors’ use of irony. Then they’ll continue reading, annotating, and discussing Pygmalion.

In our lives, we are constantly telling stories to ourselves and to others in an attempt to both understand our experiences and present our best selves to others.  But how do we tell a story about ourselves that is both true and positive? How do we hold ourselves up in the best possible light, while still being honest about our struggles and our flaws? Students will explore ways of interpreting and portraying personal experiences.  They'll read Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart , analyzing the text through the eyes of one character. They'll get to know that character's flaws and strengths, and they'll tell part of the story from that character's perspective, doing their best to tell an honest tale that presents their character's best side. Then they'll explore their own stories, crafting a personal narrative about an important moment of learning in his or her life.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and analyze Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart , viewing the events and conflicts of the novel through the eyes of one of the central characters.
Students write a two-part narrative project: one narrative told through their character’s perspective and one personal narrative about an incident in their own life.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

How do our conflicts shape and show our character?
How can we tell a story about ourselves that’s both honest and positive?
How do definitions of justice change depending on the culture you live in?
What are ways individuals can react to a changing world? To a community that doesn’t accept us?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

One of the most important lessons a student can learn in their English Language Arts class is how to critically think and communicate those ideas. As teachers, we strive to implement these two fundamental lessons within every class we teach. Essay writing, although a pain to many of our students, will help prepare our students for the world ahead of them. Our students will be expected to critically think through situations that they arise during the course of the lives and will most certainly be expected to respond. Though our students may not engross themselves into the depths of literature after they graduate, it is still just as important to instill a sense of literacy, education, culture, and critically responsive thoughts.

Although this class starts by critically examining the term “ethnic” as it defines a wide range of cultural forms over time, we will focus mostly on contemporary writers. Questions to consider will include: How has ethnic writing changed American culture and renovated forms of literary expression? What are the varieties and nuances of what we might call an ethnic subjectivity? What could it mean to harbor fugitives within the self: transgressive thoughts or a “foreign” identity? And what is the future of “ethnic” literature in a global space?

I have been concerned with high impact practices and strong student engagement in higher education for a number of years. One aspect of student engagement that I think is often lacking in higher education is a strong connection between course work and a student’s own life, a way to connect learning to life. While it is sometimes easier to see how their major may connect to their life goals, it is not always as easy to see how literature might connect to their world. This project is designed to show a direct connection between texts they read and study in the class and some aspect of their own lives, often an aspect that they may not have thought of in these terms [or in any terms] before. The final project requires students to identify a personal or familial artifact [either tangible or intangible] and apply what they have learned from the fiction they have read to an analysis of that artifact.

In order to get the most out of a piece of literature, students must empathize with the characters, try to understand what motivates the main characters, and how those characters perceive of and interact with their world. The way that our students perceive of and interact with their world is changing all the time. At this point in history, however, digital communication the key. Therefore, as teachers, if we can bring social media into the realm of literature, we have a better chance of engaging the students and getting them to see what lies within the protagonists on the page. This project has the student create a Facebook page for a character in the story, allowing each student to embody that character and interact with others from within that text or intertextually.