Overview
As an accompaniment to the existing Pittsburgh Public Schools tenth-grade curriculum for English, this unit addresses the yearlong theme of "The Individual and Society." Tenth grade scholars will develop an understanding of how individuals in Western culture define individuality and belonging to a society in a four-week unit. This study is based on the reading of three short stories: Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," Doris Lessing's "No Witchcraft for Sale," and Sylvia Plath's "Initiation," available in the core textbook, McDougal Littell's The Language of Literature (Blue), Houghton Mifflin 2002. The goal of this unit is to build an understanding of how children move through puberty and into adulthood in America through written literature and contrast that journey to that of their counterparts around the world. My goal is to represent the global community through using films from other cultures to parallel and contrast to the stories in the existing unit. By including a variable number of films or clips, other educators can choose to add three, six, or nine days to the study of these stories. All worksheets and guides can be found in the appendices.
In the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the PSP (Pittsburgh Scholars Program) is populated by students who are above mainstream level in achievement and work ethic but are not eligible for the gifted program because of IQ scores. PSP classes range from 14 to 26 students per class. At Allderdice High School there are approximately five sections each of mainstream, PSP and CAS (gifted) English per grade level. Classes are taught daily for 43 minutes per period and last throughout the entire school year. While this unit is intended for 10th grade, film suggestions for other grades are included in Additional Titles.
After each story is read and discussed, a film will be used to illustrate similarities and differences among the cultures, clearly showing American students how society differs in this country when compared to other parts of the world.
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