Strategies
This unit will take place in the fall and continue for five weeks. On the first day of school, I'll begin lessons on the multiple intelligences to give my students a better understanding of how they learn. I plan to deliver the concept of multiple intelligences to my students using the text, You're Smarter Than You Think: A Kid's Guide to Multiple Intelligences by Thomas Armstrong 8. Each student will have copies of activities from the guide to recognize and improve how he or she learns. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to one of the multiple intelligences and uses youth-friendly (as opposed to scientific) language to guide the student to the end result – how does he or she learn best?
By allowing my students to explore the intelligences to see how they learn best, I will be instilling pride. They will be able to look at each new lesson or challenge with a clear view of how to approach it. With the unit on multiple intelligences, I will also incorporate lessons on each of the HET lifeskills. For my students to fully grasp the concept and emotion of each, I will include lessons that reflect their background knowledge and previous experiences. Through this approach of beginning the year with multiple intelligences and lifeskills lessons, my students should have a good idea of the meaning of pride and courage once this literature unit begins.
I will introduce this unit by leading a discussion on the topic of pride and courage. I will provide definitions and descriptions of each to tap into prior knowledge from our lifeskills lessons. I'll ask my students to brainstorm different characters in literature or historical figures that show great pride and courage. My students may think of the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz as an example of a courageous character or Martin Luther King Jr. as an individual who had great pride.
Following our review of courage and pride, I plan to begin the first week by reading a short story aloud. We will talk about the character in detail, but also about the other literary elements that contribute to the character's situation. We'll continue the unit in a similar fashion, so the progression will be as follows:
- Week One: Short Story ("Little Things Are Big" by Jesus Colon)
- Week Two: Poem (In text format – Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou)
- Weeks Three, Four, and Five: Novel (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie)
My technique for evaluating each character is as follows:
1. Introduce the literary work. Provide any background information necessary to understand the character, whether it be historical information or the previous scene if the text is a selection of a larger work.
2. Read the text aloud.
3. Discuss the situation of the main character and how he or she is demonstrating courage or pride. This discussion will be student led, and I plan to ask open-ended questions to get the discussion going, for example, how do you think the character feels when this happens? Have you ever felt this same way?
4. Discuss the reasons the character needs to use courage or pride in the situation. What about the situation required assertiveness? Was the character confident in his or her decision?
5. Discuss how the situation would have a different outcome if the character lacked courage or pride. If the character didn't stand up and speak, how would the outcome have changed? Have you been in a situation where you should have used courage and didn't? How does that make you feel looking back at that situation?
6. Allow students to reflect on the character in his or her personal literature journal. I'll write a sentence starter on the board to prompt the writing, and for some students I'll format a literature journal as a fill in the blank template. For example, When name of character felt list an emotion, he or she chose to name the action – the student will be required to fill in the italicized.
7. Provide an assessment at the end of each week.
Forms of assessment will vary depending on the text I select. Examples of specific lessons can be seen in the classroom activities section. Weekly, the student will have a choice in his or her assessment. Examples are, but not limited to, one of the following choices:
1. Write a letter to the character, showing an emotional connection to the character and his or her use of pride or courage in the text.
2. Write song lyrics about the character's situation.
3. Artistically demonstrate an understanding of the character's emotions by completing a drawing, collage, or other art form.
4. Design an album cover for a compact disc with song titles on the back about the character's situation, for example, an album cover for The Wizard of Oz's lion may be a drawing of him receiving his medal of courage and a song title may be Coward, No More!
5. Compose a poem about the character's situation.
6. Write a monologue or skit with another student to perform about the character's situation.
Outside of my classroom, there is a large bulletin board to exhibit student work. During this unit, this board will be our Reader's Showcase, where students will show off their completed assessment for the literary piece. Their work samples will demonstrate that they have an understanding of the courage and pride used in the literature, and they will also feel proud by presenting their work for our student-body to see.
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