Strategies
In my state of New Mexico, there are three content standards for Language Arts. They are as follows: students will apply strategies and skills to comprehend information that is read, heard, and viewed. Students will communicate effectively through speaking and writing. Students will use literature and the media to develop an understanding of people, society, and the self. My Yale unit attends to each of these in detail, the third standard pre-eminent, as exhibited in my lesson plans. The study of media has become an essential part of my classroom each year, ever since 1997 when I became certified as a media literacy catalyst following an intensive week of study in Taos with the New Mexico Media Literacy Project. The use of film media as an integral part of my curriculum is recent. I'm assuming that this is true of most American school districts. Its effect is positively measurable, and for the first time this year, Santa Fe teachers were offered a professional development all-day Saturday session in film. I incorporate my forte for grammar into my film unit. I insist on my students' mastering sentence diagramming each year. This, plus vocabulary, journal and essay writing, editing, and presenting, will be highly applicable to The War of the Worlds unit. It is so much more exciting and engaging for students than the stilted grammar text. It's also a lot of hard work.
You, as I, know your classroom best. We know that empowerment can come from the application of a superior professional development experience such as I have had at Yale. Now there is the exciting application of film in my curriculum, and I shared it early this summer in a scope and sequence two-day meeting with Language Arts teachers at all levels in Santa Fe. Film and the study of adaptations espouse a new approach to delivering the established curriculum. As we adapted this genre to the state standards, we discovered that all full-inclusion students can learn from and show achievement through this medium. Now, the elements of a classical education can be combined with an artistic experience.
Watching all 123 eighth graders walking into my classroom with the required 2" binder is a dream which in no way would be financially fulfilled. We reside in the 49th poorest state for education in America. I therefore wrote two grants for the required materials last fall, wrote the children's names on their binders with a big black marker, arranged the dividers, and handed them out with the accompanying accoutrements. They were astonished and so proud. I'll repeat this process this fall. In addition, I will verbally build up this unit so that their expectations for their work are high. I place their binders, which do not leave the classroom, on a special previously unused set of shelves. Having new clean possessions of one's own, placed in a new clean setting, sets the stage for a very special learning experience.
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