Lesson Plans
Lesson 1. Reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds text, 1898.
Objectives
The following essential question will be highlighted on the chalkboard for the duration of the War of The Worlds unit: How is the original 1898 book, The War of the Worlds, presented in three different media adaptations spanning the century beginning in 1898? What have you learned about adaptations? For the first lesson, students will demonstrate mastery of the Wells text by Cornell notations and a classroom presentation.
Teacher Materials
Three versions of The War of the Worlds, which address reading levels from 3rd grade to 9th grade.
Student Materials
2" binder
Wide ruled paper
#2 pencils
Blue and black pens
5 dividers
Highlighter pens
Colored pencils
A ruler
Glue stick
Procedure
I need my five daily heterogeneous classes of students to become familiar with the H.G. Wells' text of The War of the Worlds in a relatively short period of time. I have searched for and found three different versions of the text in order to span reading levels from 3rd to 9th grade. (The original is actually at a present 10th grade student's reading level. I have a small group of students who can read it in each class.)
I have decided to use a book club approach for this lesson. First, I place the three texts on the floor of the classroom after students have moved their desks into a circle. I tell the students that it is very important for them to feel comfortable with the version of The War of the Worlds text which they choose. They should do the 5-finger test on any page in the book. If they can place their five fingers on words that they cannot recognize, the text is probably too difficult. There are multiple copies of each text, so the sizes of the three groups are accommodated and will vary in size from class to class.
Students with the same text sit with each other in a group. Students will pair up, and you will assign one or two chapters from the text for them to read to each other, covering all the chapters in the book. When the readings are completed, the student pairs log notes and prepare an informational presentation which summarizes their work, starting with chapter one and going right through the book. Thus, if there are six students in a group, six chapters can be covered with expediency. I will sit with the students in their small groups and move throughout them talking and lecturing on the points they should be logging for presentation. You, as the teacher, are assessing the students on their notes, their timely readings, and their presentations, taking into account differentiation for all student levels. This is not a formidable task; indeed, my students have learned to all read aloud at the same time, to be patient while listening, and to log their notes cooperatively.
I have introduced Cornell note taking to my students this past year and will be employing this method again in the fall. The student folds a lined paper in half lengthwise, forming two columns. The left column is headed QUESTIONS and the right one, RESPONSES. I modeled what this should look like last fall. This fall, students must strive for complete excellence in succinctly putting down their thoughts. Phrases can be used in the QUESTION column, but complete sentences are required for RESPONSES. They are encouraged to artistically annotate their responses too, in order to render their thoughts complete. They love doing this, and the result is a beautiful page of work. It will make the War of the Worlds binder visual and personal. What does a student write in the QUESTIONS column? Everything a student wants to know more about goes here, including a strange vocabulary word, a question prompted by the teacher, or perhaps one
they have about the politics or science of War of the Worlds. Included here, also, are questions the students have about what their peers are reporting on their chapters.
The pairs of students need to log the facts about their chapters and practice presenting them to the class. While some of my last year's seventh graders jumped at the chance to present and perform in front of the class, many were reluctant. I let them decide who does most of the speaking, but it needed to be well planned. By the end of the school year, all were comfortable in front of the class, and I was so proud of them. Their peers were encouraging, non-judgmental, and positive. The Cornell notation system will be used by the class members while pairs are presenting. I will be moving around the room, looking at their work, giving suggestions, asking students to help one another and, thus, assessing the quality of their work.
The Cornell notes should include a separate page for each presentation, and I grade them weekly. As my forte is grammar, I will spend the following Monday on grammar instruction. Happily, it will not address a grammar text which has no relevance to the subject matter. It will, however, be intense. On a typical Monday, I'll show an overhead transparency of students' sentences from their RESPONSES column. These will be from a different class. The students will have a handout of the same sentences and will be asked to proofread them with editing marks, and then I'll have them come up and edit the transparency. One grammatical convention will be studied in detail that day, and students will be taught an additional diagramming technique. We were just starting prepositional phrases at the end of the school year. I do want to add that my grammar comments on their Cornell notes are not written with a red pen. Over the years, I have seen this as a basically degrading influence not only on self-esteem but also on the quality of the work which follows.
Under my guidance, the class as a whole will design a peer evaluation rubric for the student presentations. They are quite adept at doing this now. A typical rubric for such an assignment might have three columns, numbered 1-3, with the essentials for each score written below the numbers. They might include such factors as speaking clearly, citing factual information, and obviously having read and studied the chapter. Students make a peer evaluation sheet on which they write each fellow student's name, their score, and a comment. As the teacher, you do an assessment of your own, looking at the Cornell notes, evaluating the classroom presentation. Have students used their minds well? Does your assessment address the essential learning targets that have been the focus of the lesson?
Lesson 2. Adaptation #1, The War of the Worlds, the radio broadcast, 1938.
Objectives: Study the background for the broadcast and listen to it carefully. Were people just plain gullible, or were they set up by an ambitious actor?
Teacher Materials:
The War of the Worlds, Mercury Theatre radio broadcast CD
Reserve your school's computer lab for three days straight.
One or more pages from four or five plays which are written at various student levels
Student Materials:
Binders
Paper
Pens
Pencils
Glue sticks
Construction paper
Scissors
Post-it chart paper
Markers
One hole punch
Large binder rings
Procedure
You will hand out a reading about Orson Welles based on my background information for this unit. Students should understand his motives for his radio broadcast adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Do not discuss the political and societal events of 1938 until later. The first part of this lesson enables your students to feel comfortable listening to sixty minutes of original radio broadcasting. (You may cut out a few minutes of the ballroom music if your class periods are 50-55 minutes long, as are mine.)
Students will have their War of the Worlds binders out and will have turned to a clean sheet of paper. As students close their eyes, you may read the following script to them: You are sitting with your family of six in your pj's in your small three room home in Paramus, NJ. The year is 1938. T.V. has not been invented, so the radio is a major source of entertainment, news, and authority. Your family gathers ceremoniously every Sunday night to listen to the Charlie McCarthy Show at 8pm on NBC. You do this tonight. It is the night before Halloween. There is an air of excitement as your Kaczala family chats in Ukranlish, a name given locally to the mixing of your parents' native Ukranian tongue and English. Post the words, skepticism and gullibility, in large block letters on the front wall of the classroom. Keep a discussion of the words alive throughout this second lesson.
At 7:55 pm, in CBS studio 1, Orson Welles and other actors assemble in front of their microphones. An announcer welcomes radio listeners to the Mercury Theatre's radio play of H.G. Wells' famous book, The War of the Worlds. About 12 minutes into the Charlie McCarthy Show, NBC takes its first commercial break, and your dad switches the dial to CBS, where you hear your first news report. Put yourself back into the time period and listen. As you listen, write down single words or phrases from the broadcast that you find interesting or important. You may annotate your work with small drawings or words that express your emotional responses to the words or phrases. When the students are done, put them into pairs for a Quaker Reading. Students will take a few minutes to read aloud what they've written to their partners. Then, as in a Quaker meeting, tell the students to read a word or phrase from their list when the spirit moves them. All students will participate, each reading at least two of their entries. This type of reading has a very nice effect.
The next activity is the writing of a play based on the radio show which can be performed for other classes or parents. This definitely involves higher order thinking skills, such as the synthesis of materials, application to a play format, listening, and performing. Artwork will accompany the activity as a cover will be made by each group for its play. You will need to carefully plan the composition of your student groups, which will number about 5-6 students in each of five groups. You should also assign a leader for each group and a scribe. Each group will write a two-paged script in their binders about a particular period of the radio broadcast which you will assign them. Students are to use their imaginations, not varying too much from the historical era and the facts from the book they read. Humor, terror, empathy, authority, panic, and resilience will be evident in their writings.
Students will move into a circle with their groups. This is where they will sit daily for the duration of this project other than when they use the computer lab. The groups should be located close to a wall where you have hung a large piece of Post-it chart paper. It's important that you discuss with the class the duties of the group leaders and scribes. All students are graded on their writings, their attention to the project, their research, and, of course, the ability to cooperate. Refer to the group norms you may have charted at the beginning of the school year. All ideas are to be considered and respected. Make sure the students have plenty of paper and pencils. Depending on how much work you've done with plays, you should spend some time reading excerpts from plays that you hand out to them. Remind them of the important features of writing a play: setting, plot, characterization, and climax. They should examine these features closely as they will be writing their own works now.
Begin the playwriting by assigning each group a scene, including what should be covered time wise from the radio play and a suggestion list of characters to which they may add others. The scenes may look something like this:
Scene one covers the Mercury Theatre script writers preparing for the October 28, 1938, broadcast. In three days, they'll present the play to the nation. They are still arguing over whether to use The War of the Worlds or not, and as the scene ends, they've been convinced by Orson Welles to write it. Possible characters for scene one include narrator(s), Anne Friedman and Howard Koch, writers for the Mercury Theatre, Orson Welles, radio producer and actor, and several others the student group wants to make up. Scene two includes the events from the beginning of the broadcast to the Martians firing on innocent people in Grovers Mills, NJ. Characters include narrator(s), Orson Welles, CBS announcer, and innocent bystanders. The military should not appear in this scene.
Scene three begins with a narrator's statement that the CBS radio show has been transmitted throughout the United States. It ends with the grave announcement that the military has lost thousands of infantrymen. Characters for this scene include the narrator(s), the CBS announcer, and at least three roles, including a military General, which the students decide upon. Scene four will begin with the CBS switchboard's being swamped with calls and will end with Orson Welles' comment that he hasn't broken a law by producing the radio play. Characters will include Orson Welles, the President of CBS, narrator(s), and at least two other characters. The final scene, scene five, begins with newspaper reporters interviewing Orson Welles. It ends with Welles' signing on to represent the Campbell Soup Company. The characters will be Orson Welles, narrator(s), a spokesman for Campbell Soup, and a number of newspaper reporters.
Move around the room with a boom box that plays the 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, sitting with each group and playing their particular section of the CD. They should be furiously taking notes. Remind them that what they include in their section of the play should be thoughtful, true to the broadcast and the historical period, but also including some clever characters and dialogue of their own invention. Take two or three days in the computer lab at your school. Lecture to the students on the first day about the historical setting and scientific implications for the fall of 1938. Students will follow this up by doing research from websites which they discover; newspaper citations from the days following the broadcast will excite them, as will their discovery of photos from the scenes at the Mercury Theater. This research can be downloaded and pasted into their binders; it will provide the groups with substantive facts which they'll write into their scripts. Pictures which address The War of the Worlds text and the three adaptations can be downloaded and added by the students to add interest. Fortunately, the two computer rooms at my school are arranged in circular pods, five pods per room. This is just perfect for the assignment at hand.
Back in the classroom, the students should be very excited about the play writing, as they are creatively producing their own first adaptation of the text. Begin by having them write everything that comes to their mind that might be applicable to their scene. They should become the characters, personify them, and come up with a serious yet clever dialogue. The group leader will then organize their group using strong group dynamics for the discussion that goes into writing the scene. The scribe will stand by the large Post-it chart and write down the number of the scene, the list of characters, and the suggested script. With arrows, circled words, and other annotations, the script will evolve into a final product which pleases the group. The scribe will rewrite it in its final form. Members of the group have also copied what the scribe writes daily and reflected upon these writings for homework, adding any other thoughts. The use of special effects for the presentation will earn extra credit.
As occurs with most creative assignment, groups will finish their scenes at different times. They should use the computers in your classroom to do a hard copy, 6" by 8".
When it has been declared finished, the groups can download their scripts and you can copy them for the members of each group. It is now presentation time, and the groups have logically decided who best fits each character. Give them a class period to practice their scene; present the play the next day. It is now time for the entire class to give their play a title. Explain that you will be handing out copies of the entire play to all students the next day and that they will need to decide how they want to put their play together: stapling, binding with cord, or using a one-hole punch and one big binder ring.
Give the classes a day or two to design a front and back cover for their play. We all know how fulfilling this is, and it adds a very personal closure to a well done writing project. Make available all the art supplies they need: markers, pens, construction paper, colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks. After the plays are read in class, perhaps you will have all of your classes meet as a large group for a block of time which you've preplanned with your team during. Try to use a space different from your room for this special day, hang white lights, and let students sit on bean bags if they're available. I do this once or twice a year for special presentations. Each and every student participates in the reading of their group's play, and the audience is respectful. This is a day of celebration and pride. Clapping is greatly encouraged. You will take the plays home, recalling the work each student has put into them, and grade them accordingly.
Lesson 3. Adaptation #2. The War of the Worlds, films, 1953 and 2005.
Objectives: The student will compare and contrast the use of cinematic conventions in the two films and thus gain an appreciation for the technological advances in film production over the forty year period. Students will be prepared to address America's societal differences and its effect upon the making of these films. The culminating activity for the War of the worlds unit on adaptation will focus on each student's ability to express himself/herself by creating a 3'X 10' banner; the top 3'X3' will be their own work of art, and the bottom will be a graphic organizer of compared and contrasted items dealing with various items from this particular adaptation study. These will be hung in the school's hallway.
Teacher materials:
Copy of The War of the Worlds film, 1953
Copy of The War of the Worlds film, 2005
Large screen from district's media center
Student Materials:
Binders
Large rolls of butcher paper in various colors
3 white rolls of butcher paper
Crayons, markers, colored pencils
Black pens
Procedure
For the first time last fall, I used film in the classroom as a new genre by which to enhance the learning process in ways unavailable through the other media I had previously taught. As a means of communication, film is an uncommonly powerful resource for teachers at all levels. For my middle school purposes, my current unit further addresses the essentials of cinema, especially, the adaptation of a treasured science fiction text dating back to the 19th century. As there are two cinematic adaptations of Wells' The War of the Worlds, my current eighth graders, whom I taught last year in seventh grade, should be well equipped to critically view, appreciate, and evaluate the skills of the filmmakers. It will be most helpful for you to have a copy of Timothy Corrigan's The Film Experience. The book will introduce you, and thus your students, to the practical tools you need to view films critically. It includes all the basics of film characteristics which include lens techniques, camera movements, camera angles, framing of shots, and film editing; these can create astonishing views not found in reality. Close-up shots allow a director to show the viewer dramatic emotions that might go unnoticed with ordinary vision, and long shots place the image and its behavior within a larger context. Looking at shots is a logical place for students to work as they are so used to the T.V., computer, and movie screens.
College of Santa Fe students in the film studies department were a big help to me last year, and being in the middle school classroom opened their eyes to an entirely new age group, eager to learn the basics. CSF gave their students who worked with me college credit for their obligatory service learning requirement, so it was a win/win. You are likely to have a similar source right in your own backyard. You and/or the college students can introduce this lesson by lecturing on the basic film conventions, writing key terms on the board, showing examples, and giving students time for questions. Students should use a Cornell Notes sheet in their binder which they've already discussed and headlined. As the lecture starts, give them time to write the items and questions about them in their left hand column. Tell students that they will focus on several of these items for their banner project. The lecturing should be slow paced and show examples of the various film conventions in order to help the students know what they're looking for as they view both films of The War of the Worlds. As the lecturing is being done, tell students to feel free to come to the board to write words on a War of the Worlds Word Wall. These can be used as part of your vocabulary study.
It is time to view the 1953 version of the movie. Your room should be comfortably arranged for viewing, note taking, and discussion. (Think about where your IEP students will best be served). This will take two class periods, and the college students should be there to stop or rewatch frames and scenes of their/your choosing which demonstrate the film conventions addressed above. Your room should be comfortably arranged for viewing. Explain to students ahead of time that this is the only time they'll se this version as a group, so they must be attentive. It's easy to find at most video shops if they decide to rent it at home. The viewing of this historic film is most successful if students are as quiet as possible; they must save any comments for afterwards. Pose several thought provoking questions before the viewing which you also write on the board. What was the director thinking when he set the movie in Hollywood, CA? What scientific subjects do we learn about? What does the film teach us about the 1950's?
Take the next day or two to process what has been observed and learned. Fill in the right hand column on the Cornell Note sheet. Add a second Cornell Note sheet which addresses new questions the students have after having seen the film. The next day should be spent in the computer lab where students will find many sources of information on American life during the Cold War era, from our relationship with the Soviet Union to science and technology to fashion. Students can print this information rather than taking the time to write out copious notes. Back in the classroom, you and the students will talk about and connect their information to production of this film. Having had to listen and not talk while watching the film, your students can now bring up their questions and their reactions to The War of the Worlds events. Students will need plenty of time to work alone or with a friend on their Cornell Notes. Give them highlighters with which to begin marking the topics which have really caught their interest. These are the topics which they should focus on when watching the second film in order to complete the banner project.
Arrange for the college students to assist you as before, as you take the next two days to view the 2005 movie. Your classes will basically follow the same procedure as they did for the first film adaptation; however, they most likely saw the Spielberg adaptation at the movie theater. Why did the director place the setting in New York City? Is it OK for directors to change so many of the basic facts of an original text? This should be a great discussion/debate. Using Cornell Notes and the computer lab, follow the same basic format as above for the second adaptation. Now the students have garnered all they need to fashion a War of the Worlds banner.
Before or after school one day, give several students extra credit for helping you measure and cut a 3' X 3' square of white butcher paper, one for each student. Make extras. This will be the painting, drawing, or collage the student designs and finishes with pride. Naturally, rough drafts will be worked out first. Your desks can be placed against the walls, students working on the floor in the middle. Students choose the medium with which they are most comfortable. Have plenty of magazines and newspapers around for those who choose to do a collage, put some background music on, and allow students to talk. Once you've approved the initial design, they can start the final product. Survey each student for the color of butcher paper they want for the 3'X10' banner. Hang the banner on the walls outside your room. As I will teach 123 students this fall, there will be 123. Have the students write their names across the bottom in marker.
The white artwork which they've completed can be glued to the top of the banner. Then, in their best lettering possible, they'll write their title, The War of the Worlds. The bottom 6 ½ feet should be carefully planned out by the student as he/she refers back to film conventions, adaptation concepts, America in 1953 and in 2005, movie reviews of both films, and other various concepts they've captured in their Cornell Notes. This largest section of the banner will be used to compare and contrast at least ten of these items, hopefully many more. The format is up to the student's imaginative design. It could appear like the typical graphic organizer, blocked and in columns; it might also be circles or clouds, stars, geometric or mandala designs. It must compare and contrast at least ten items, and the spelling must be perfect. The culminating project should be displayed for the whole school to observe.
Comments: