Emily's Blog

Journal Entry 2

Milburn, M. (2002, Sept.).  Shakespeare for a New Age. The English Journal, 92, 74-79.

 

 Milburn’s article describes the problems many teachers face when contemplating whether to teach Shakespeare or not.  He talks about the excitement many teachers have when coming up with lesson plans to teach Shakespeare, but also states his feelings of how young people cannot appreciate Shakespeare and also do not like Shakespeare so it is a waste of time to teach.  

 

Milburn also talks about his mistrust of teaching difficult literature in fear of his students not wanting to read in general because of being assigned difficult text.  He is constantly thinking about engaging his students and helping them to want to read.  

 

 Milburn still assigns works with literary merit but they are Tobias Wolff and J.D. Salinger rather than Hawthorn, Dickens and Shakespeare.  He states that their “copious details would exhaust my kids’ patience long before they could enjoy his entertaining plots and characters.  

 

 Personal feelings and biases are taken into account when deciding what to teach. Milburn states that although he came from a literary family, even he couldn’t appreciate Shakespeare at the eighth grade level.  Even though he became a “Shakespeare” lover after college, he does not think that his students will have the same appreciation he does.  This personal bias seems to control his teaching. 

 

 When Milburn finally gives into to teaching Shakespeare, he teaches one monologue instead of the entire work.  He wanted his students to appreciate the words and begin to have an understanding for a small part of Shakespeare.  He found that even after this activity his students did not appreciate Shakespeare as much as the lesson had hopped.  

 

 After reading this article it became clear to me that the author of the article is more concerned with his students liking him and liking to read than teaching and challenging his students.  He shies away from difficult topics in fear of losing his students.  I do not think this is the case. 

 

 He will never know what his students can really do in his classes if he does not challenge them.  By making the simple assumption that eighth grade students cannot appreciate Shakespeare is an easy way to get out of teaching a difficult topic.  

Posted at 01:28PM Nov 06, 2007 by eshelton in General  |  Comments[0]

Journal Entry 1

Meyer, H., & Thomsen, L. (1999, May). Actively experiencing Shakespeare: students: get on their feet” for Henry IV, Part One, 88, 58-61. 

It is easy to see why students are apprehensive about learning Shakespeare; the strange language, funny names and Elizabethan manners and politics can easily through students off. Most students hear the name Shakespeare and automatically have a negative connotation. So then, how can Language Arts teachers help students to become interested in what Shakespeare is about?

The article reminds us that our methods of teaching Shakespeare are what can help students become interested. English teachers need to develop strategies that help students comprehend and analyze literature so they can better understand what they are reading.

The article makes another good point. Shakespeare was not written to be read, but rather performed. Simply reading the text leave students empty and uninvolved, but helping students to reenact the text will help them become engaged and therefore come out with a better understanding of the works.

This article focuses on Henry IV Part One, but reenactments can and should be done for all of Shakespeare’s works. The authors of the article use Folger Shakespeare Library as a resource for the activities presented in the article.

The methods in the article vary. One exercise involves shouting out soliloquies in order to emphasize that Shakespeare’s language invites energy and movement while at the same time helping them to grasp and use the language. Other exercises are making genealogy charts to understand character relations and paraphrasing Shakespeare’s language into modern English so that more difficult passages can be clarified followed by performances of the paraphrases on video. The final activity was a multimedia writing project that tied together the play’s major themes, relationships, and comic elements. All of these activities helped to make Shakespeare more fun for the students and help them to understand the work.

I like the idea of using a variety of student-centered activities to help teach Shakespeare. I believe that Shakespeare is a topic that most middle and high school students would rather stay away from. So by using fun activities to help the students grasp the main topics can help them to loose the stigma behind Shakespeare.

I do not think that this activity is bound to Shakespeare but can be used in conjunction to a variety of different literature. Any time student-centered, engaging and fun activities are incorporated in a classroom, I believe that the students’ attitudes and beliefs about a subject can rise.

Posted at 12:59PM Nov 06, 2007 by eshelton in General  |  Comments[0]

Teaching Literature (Chapter 11)

Pg 350 Reflection

I loved to read in middle school and high school. I read a lot more literature than many of the students in my class. Besides teacher-led discussions we didn’t talk about literature very much. In middle school I remember reading Jane Eyre, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Little House on the Prairie books. In high school I remember reading Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, The Great Gatsby, Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, Hamlet, Catch 22, Cannery Row, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The majority of these were school assignments besides To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, and The Little House on the Prairie series. I hope to teach a variety of literary art in my classroom. It will probably depend on what grade I am teaching and the books other teachers in the department teach.

The “cannon”

 I have heard of the cannon before and knew it contained the “most important books” but I have never examined the actual works in the cannon. The discussion we had in class brought up some questions that I had. Should we teach works directly from the cannon? If we don’t teach these works will the students ever read them? and how do you effectively teach works that might seem dead to the students? It is my assumption that these questions come up often when dealing with teaching the cannon. As Language Arts educators, I think it is the assumption that students should know about the great authors that have come before us, but how do you choose which authors to talk about and which to not. In reality our students are getting what we want them to know and what we think is important rather than what they do. Just like Dr. Duggan stated, when we choose to teach a particular work, we are in essence choosing not to teach all of the other works. If we do not teach these other works will our students ever get to it. There are pieces of literature I have read two or more times for various different classes, and then there are pieces of literature I have never been assigned to read. As educators how can we bridge this gap?

Posted at 09:49AM Oct 31, 2007 by eshelton in General  |  Comments[2]

Selecting Literature (Chapter 10) Reflections

Pg. 313

The quote by G. Robert Carlsen is interesting to think about. He states, “Every time we select a piece of literature to read, we are exposing ourselves to a vision: a vision of people and places and things; a vision of relationship and feelings and strivings.” I like this quote because it is true.

What we read is the product of an author with a vision. As readers it is hard to tell if the author’s vision came true or not; we are reading it nonetheless. All literature is someone’s vision and we need to take that into consideration when we are reading a piece of literature.

This becomes especially important when we are exposing our students to literature. Is the vision of the author appropriate for our students, and if not why. Does the vision really affect how we read the work, or do we read it without consideration of the author’s vision. All of these questions are important when selecting literature for our students to read.

Pg. 315 Reflection

In middle school I do not remember the literature we read. The reading I remember doing was Accelerated Reading books that we read to obtain a certain amount of points required by our teacher. Sometimes I choose “classics” other times I choose books like The Babysitters Club and Goosebumps. I am not sure if I simply don’t remember assigned books, or if simply did not have any.

In high school we read literature such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Lord of the Flies, Grapes of Wrath, Where the Red Fern Grows, Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, and many short stories. Not all students read the same literature. There was often a list of several books to choose from for one assignment. I took every Language Arts class available at my high school so I read a lot more than the majority of students. I liked when we read contemporary pieces that still had literary merit.

I think there is an ongoing debate over what is considered merited literature and what is not. I think that students should be exposed to the classics, but should also be exposed to present day writers, such as Luis Erdrich, John Grisham, Sherman Alexie, and Steven King. For me, the most important thing is to have students enjoy reading. Many will not enjoy reading Jane Eyre, but might like John Grisham’s latest novel. Does the content necessarily matter as long as they are reading?

Pg. 326 Reflection

It is evident that male authors were published before female authors. While a lot of it has to do with equality and the roles of men and women in past societies, another aspect is that women were not educated to write until recently. If women did go to school they were often taught how to become nurses and teachers, and not encouraged to write and many times did not have the ability to go to college to study writing like the men did.

Currently I think that women are just as likely to get published as men. The gender inequality has subsided drastically over the past 75 years. Women like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton paved the way for women poets.

I think it is important to not only teach works by female authors, but authors of a variety of different societies as well. Literature might be the only insight into different cultures for a lot of students so Language Arts educators should expose there students to diverse writing.

Posted at 08:40PM Oct 28, 2007 by eshelton in General  |  Comments[0]

Teaching Grammar (Chapter 7) Reflections

While I understand that grammar is an important aspect of many curriculums and play a huge role in standards, I believe that grammar should be dealt with in terms of writing and composition rather than teaching it seperately. How does knowing the parts of speech truly help the students become more proficient writers?[Read More]

Posted at 08:13PM Oct 28, 2007 by eshelton in General  |  Comments[0]