Primary source documents serve as the bedrock of all reliable social studies. They provide firsthand facts, descriptions, opinions, and accounts which illuminate the distant world of the past while allowing us to better understand the present. To many students, however, primary source documents are foreign, verbose, and tedious.

In order to reach out to these students, a history teacher’s best weapon is often adaptation, especially through the medium of film. Passionate actors, perceptive directors, witty screenwriters, and elaborate costumes bring dusty historical documents back to life through an immersive audiovisual experience.

Yet with a bit of inspection, these cinematic adaptations of history can reveal much more than secondary historical details. By analyzing these films as primary source documents themselves, audiences can gain insight into the time period in which the movies were made.

This curriculum unit considers the story of Spartacus—the celebrated hero of ancient history and the 1960 film directed by Stanley Kubrick—as both a primary and secondary source of history. How does Spartacus compare to the ancient sources recorded before the common era? And how does Spartacus reveal the political and social turmoil which afflicted the United States throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s?

This course covers works by major American novelists, beginning with the late 18th century and concluding with a contemporary novelist. The class places major emphasis on reading novels as literary texts, but attention is paid to historical, intellectual, and political contexts as well. The syllabus varies from term to term, but many of the following writers are represented: Rowson, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Wharton, James, and Toni Morrison. Previously taught topics include The American Revolution and Makeovers (i.e. adaptations and reinterpretation of novels traditionally considered as American “Classics”). May be repeated for credit with instructor’s permission so long as the content differs.

Students apply the analytical skills that they use when reading literature to an exploration of the underlying meaning and symbolism in Hieronymous Bosch's early Renaissance painting "Death and the Miser".

Students will analyze photos for specific details that reveal the owner of a specific room.Then the analysis will include literature but will focus on literary devices and connotations.Also, students will have the opportunity to summarize text and then use evidence to support specific connotations.

Students who are authentically engaged in reading ask questions about the text, make their own interpretations, and connect the stories they read to their own lives. Moving from written works to their film counterparts opens the original piece to different kinds of interpretations. My unit focuses on creating a space in which students read through different lenses, produce different meanings, outcomes, and understandings in order to strengthen critical thinking skills and to build an infinite capacity for meaning. By examining the underlying embedded themes and then seeing how those ideas are adapted into other media, students will be better positioned to make higher ordered inferences. What impact might a documentary, movie, or animated version have on the readers? What might students notice that they otherwise may have missed in the text version? What connections can students make between text and film versions? Adaptation, the transformation of text to film, is apropos to this unit tentatively titled Adapting Literature to Capture Authentic Understandings as it seeks to present strategies to help students use select literary devices in order to help them understand implied universal themes.

This resource is designed to walk students through the process of completing a research project in any field of study. It covers the earliest stages of brainstorming and discussing, continues through researching and compiling sources; writing, documenting, revising, and polishing a paper; and finally presenting the research topic to a wider audience in a professional manner. The focus is on MLA format, though the course could be modified for other formats.

The first unit is an introduction to the project. It asks students to draw on knowledge of issues affecting their own community and world to help generate discussion that could eventually lead to a research topic.

In this class we will focus on the connections between urban exploration and reading, attending to such shared concerns as pacing, legibility, transgression, attention and distraction, tracing and retracing, and memory. This idea of re-reading cities will be both a theme centering our discussions and a guiding principle of the course design, as we continuously loop back, returning to haunt texts we left behind earlier in the semester.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will explore great works of American literature and consider how writers reflect the time period in which they write. They will write two literary analysis papers and also work in groups to research and develop anthologies of excellent American stories.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and analyze stories from several 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century American authors. After researching a time period, they select stories from that period to create an anthology. The readings enhance their understanding of the short story, increase their exposure to well-known American authors, and allow them to examine the influence of social, cultural, and political context.
Students examine elements of short stories and have an opportunity for close reading of several American short stories. During these close readings, they examine the ways that short story writers attempt to explore the greater truths of the American experience through their literature.

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.

If you were to write a short story about this decade, what issues might you focus on?
What defines a short story? Just length?
To what extent do these stories reflect the era or decade in which they were written?
To what extent are the themes they address universal?

CLASSROOM FILMS

History.com has short videos on the Vietnam War (“Vietnam” and “A Soldier's Story”).

In this lesson, students will present their projects to the class. They will reflect on their own project and those of the other groups in the class.

In the final lesson in this episode, and as a warm-up for the final essay and project, students will discuss the organization of the student sample essay “The Search for Knowledge.”

This unit is to explore the influence of an author's life on his or her work through the analysis of American Short Stories.

This book has been developed by Erik Wilbur at Mohave Community College to support Introduction to Literature courses at rural Arizona community colleges. A PDF version and a Microsoft Doc. version of the book are available for download.

This resource intends to help students understand how parallelism is about more than mechanics and actually central to building thematic concepts.  

This unit is designed to appeal to adolescents with its non-print text base, the movie "Groundhog Day". The pre-viewing activities prepare students for the allusions in the movie and include cultural literacy. The teacher can pick and choose from the activities to apply the concept of personal growth. The teacher may select from activities for science, workplace ethics, music, computer competency, and English language arts. The teacher may modify any of the attachments to suit the students' needs and interests. Students will: demonstrate accurate analysis of audience through appropriate choices in diction, motive support, point support, and non-print textual support; demonstrate knowledge of the concept of character qualities and reflect positive values. The content of the presentation must be persuasive and make connections between literary elements (plot development and dynamic characterization) and another discipline (psychology, science, vocational arts, or music).

In this unit, centered around the core fiction text The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, 8th graders explore the history and implications of stereotyped gender roles, and about modern feminism. In the course of the unit, they respond to nonfiction text, analyze literature, reflect on their own parental expectations and write creatively. The students in my school are from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Material students may be able to contribute from their own ancestral families of origin will enrich the unit and help make it personally relevant. In addition to the expected focus on the stereotyping of women the unit can devote ample time to the stereotyping of boys and men, as well as feelings of entrapment as the result of parental expectations for many young people.

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

California Poet Laureate Al Young has created a profound and enduring body of work that represents our time. Young's numerous publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and for the stage and screen explore the American, human condition through the lens of the individual voice. Tune in as he reads a selection of his Poems before a live audience at UC Berkeley. (28 minutes)

Revolutionary poet, playwright, and activist Amiri Baraka is recognized as the founder of the Black Arts Movement, a literary period that began in Harlem in the 1960s and forever changed the look, sound, and feel of American poetry. 26 minutes)