Introduction
Creating a curriculum that “surveys all literary periods” in various genres while also keeping the text-selection diverse in authorship is not easy. It is challenging to keep your students engaged throughout the school year, so when you add in having to keep them engaged throughout all of literary history the pressure begins to mount. Because of this, I have created a curriculum unit that not only interests my students, but connects to their lives in the 21st century. Analyzing how image and text have worked together in literary history and life accomplish that.
The young adults of today are inundated with images and text together at an alarming rate. Twenty-first century society has created a need for students to have more than traditional linguistic literacy. There is now a need for students and citizens in general to be literate in various contexts. Singular linguistic literacy, although still obviously important, is not sufficient. First, despite being products of a vastly image-saturated and technological world, many don’t have a well-developed visual literacy--which I will define here as being able to “effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use and create images and visual media”.1 Students must also be able to utilize both traditional and visual literacy when they critically evaluate images paired with text.
Furthermore, media literacy has a place in this unit as well. According to the Center for Media Literacy’s (CML) website, they define media literacy as “a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.”2 Also, according to a video published by the CML in 2017, a kindergartner sees seven media messages a day on average, and by high school that child will spend ⅓ of their day using media.3 That media is a mix of image and text via television, video games, YouTube, advertisements, social media, digital billboards and multiple other outlets.
Consequently, images are much less threatening to young people because they are so comfortable with all the media and visual aspect of their everyday lives. While developing these literacies, I am also sneakily using that comfort to get the students acclimated to various techniques they need for the analysis of literature high school and beyond--close reading, compare and contrast, identifying authorial intent, critical thinking, using literary criticism lenses, and more. This unit will not only focus on linking together my curriculum throughout the year by studying the relationship between image and text but also concentrate on improving the multiple literacies a 21st-century student and citizen needs.
School Background
Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School (BOYCP) is on the southside of Chicago. It is one of the first wall-to-wall International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Because of this, our curriculum has an international mindset, and we strive to develop the student to fit the IB learner profile--students “who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world.”
BOYCP is a semi-selective enrollment urban high school that is predominately Hispanic (89.4% Hispanic, 5.7% Asian, 3.2 % Black, 1.5% White, and 0.2% are listed as “other”) and low income (96.6%). The majority of students are bilingual in one manner or another (oral and/or written skills vary). We have three main academic tracks of students - scholars (also includes the co-taught environment & ELL classes), magnet (honors) and pre-IB (high honors). We have a level 1+ rating by Chicago Public Schools, the highest possible school rating.
Whom the Unit Serves
The students participating in this unit are sophomores (age 15-16) of varying ability levels and language proficiencies. My grade level partner and I will be implementing this unit with varying levels of differentiation for all the sophomores in the building. English II is a class that surveys historical periods as preparation for the students entering two very rigorous programs--a two year International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (DP) Literature program or a one year Advanced Placement Literature class followed by a dual enrollment English class with the City Colleges of Chicago. Because of this, one of the goals of English II is to introduce the students to various forms of critical analysis and provide some historical context for literary and historical time periods. The course covers mixed genres in the following periods: Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.
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