February 17, 2009

Welcome back, Friend!

All in all a great day and a great experience! Started a four day unit with all of Mrs. Taylor's classes on Literature as Historical Documents, with a special emphasis on when poetry can be used as an original historical source document. First period I felt as if I were completely unprepared, did not think I gained the students attention while reviewing what Literature is, explaining what historical documents are, describing historical fiction as opposed to fiction set in an era, and the rare cases when historical fiction MAY be original documents (basically, only the names are changed, and everything is verifiable with other sources). Despite my misgivings on the reception, Mrs. Taylor says I did as well as possible with the first period class because they were coming back from a long weekend due to Presidents Day. The poem I used to demonstrate poetry as historical document was The Star Spangled Banner, and I introduced it by playing a CD of Jimmi Hendrix's rendition as played at Woodstock. That seemed to wake people up!

Have set seven focus questions for the week's study, partially review, partially new materials:
1) What is Literature?
2)What are some different literary forms?
3) What is an Original Historical Document (OHD)?
4) What are some examples of an OHD?
5) What is Historical Fiction?
6) When can Historical Fiction be examples of OHDs?
7) When can a poem be an OHD?

Mrs. Taylor reviewed the lesson plan I wrote for this section as part of my FOED 1010 and 2010 classes, and approved the use prior to the end of last week. She has allowed me to assign home work projects and I am writing a quiz for assessment. Mrs. Taylor has also allowed me to give a voluntary extra credit assignment for any student who wishes to improve their marking period grade by 2 points.

The home work project, due Friday the 20th, is for each student to write his or her own original historical poem about any event or incident that they personally witnessed or experienced. Mrs. Taylor expanded it to allow 'witnessing' the event to include through the media, which allows for 9/11, Katrina, the inauguration of President Obama, and much more. She has also said that it can be as personal as a family birth or loss. I have given the students complete freedom as far as form and content.

The extra credit assignment is an essay of at least 3 paragraphs, typed and double spaced, on "What the Star Spangled Banner Means to Me" from the student's viewpoint. First drafts are due by Tuesday the 24th, and Mrs. Taylor and I will be submitting them (unless asked not to) to NPR for possible inclusion in one of the programs on National Radio.

The review/introduction was lecture style, with my writing the focus questions on the board and asking "What is..." questions before giving definitions, and discussing examples the students have read in the past, although much of this segued into movies based on the books I was trying to discuss. Hard to believe how many of the students did not realize that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was a book first. When I asked for an example of a poem as HOD, I then played the CD and handed out copies of the original as found on the Star Spangled Banner website. We then did a detailed examination of the poem to find what factual information we could determine, using "How do we know?" questions as a guide in the analysis.

I will be asking Mrs. Taylor to post comments on her observations to this blog. This will definitely help me in assessing how I did.

More soon!