Teaching Strategies
We simply do not have enough class time for students to fully engage in the reading process, so I will establish a practice of having students read as homework. The hope is that students will learn the importance of accountability for learning that goes beyond the classroom. All other assignments will happen in class, unless a student needs additional time to complete an assignment, in which case the student would have to work on the assignment at home. However, Mt. Pleasant has after-school support with tutoring through Goodwill Assets, the Cardinal Writing Center, and other after school supports on campus. Students will have their own chromebooks provided by the school, but they will also keep a physical notebook for my class specifically. This will be the first year in which I will employ a hybrid system of instruction, but it feels like a natural transition from distance learning in 2020 and 2021.
Teaching strategies, which are also outlined throughout the three major parts of the lesson, include the following:
Highlighting and Annotating
At Mt. Pleasant High School, we have a specific protocol on how students should highlight and annotate a text, which students have been taught to do in previous English classes. For instance, vocabulary is highlighted in purple and defined in the margin. I use these highlighting strategies and colors myself as a model, but in AP Literature I encourage students to either use these guidelines or find another annotation method. In this way, I hope to encourage students to think about what annotation strategies--and learning strategies in general--work best for them as many of them will enter college the following year.
Modeling
This instructional move involves me modeling the processes for completing a task. One example is analyzing “The New Colossus” as a class while showing the writing on the SmartBoard so that students can see how to do it, especially if any student is having difficulty doing it themselves. This will be especially important following a year and a half of distance learning, where students may not have been sharpening certain skills because they felt unsupported and isolated in their learning. Eventually students will take on the role of modeling the task completion process for their classmates/peers so that I can then take on a more facilitative role and model as needed.
Think-Pair-Share
Students turn to talk to their table partners about a particular prompt (the desks in my classroom are arranged in pairs). This allows students to share aloud without speaking to the whole class, and it helps students gather their thoughts and practice expressing them before a whole class discussion. Students will also receive insight and feedback from their partner that can contribute to their thinking and learning process.
Online Research
An important skill I teach in all my classes is showing students how to determine a reliable source of information, engage in the process of finding credible information on the internet, and cite their sources accurately so as to avoid plagiarism. The Scavenger Hunt gives them an opportunity to practice this skill without the task being high stakes, like as a research essay.
Technology Integration
Transitioning out of distance learning, I want to incorporate the technology I used during distance learning into the traditional classroom environment. Each student will have their own ChromeBook, but they will also have physical notebooks for my class. This hybrid setup will help students transition into the traditional setting without abandoning the platforms on which they were learning during the past one and a half years. Programs I will use include Google Classroom (for communication and posting activities that are not in the notebook), Pear Deck (where students can interact with direct instruction slides and become more involved in their own learning), and Jamboard (where students can share answers so they all can see without cluttering the actual boards with post-its).
Fishbowl Discussion
A Fishbowl Discussion has four students in the middle of the classroom who are mainly involved in the discussion with a fifth seat that can be occupied by anybody outside the Fishbowl who wants to contribute a single point or counterargument to the discussion. I am purposely choosing this format because during distance learning, class discussions were basically nonexistent, and jumping right into a traditional, whole class, formal discussion would be difficult for students who have not practiced that skill. Students will also be provided with sentence starters for discussions in particular, which will also provide scaffolding for the activity. We will use this format for the “Writing as a Revolutionary Act” activity and discussion.
Expository Paragraph, also known as an Analysis Paragraph
This paragraph can stand alone or serve as a body paragraph within an essay, so it is a writing structure that we practice throughout the year. In my pedagogical discussions, I refer to it as an expository paragraph, but to the students I call it an analysis paragraph to emphasize the focus on analyzing the text or issue. At Mt. Pleasant, we teach paragraph writing using a mnemonic device: “The two sexy elephants sold cotton candy,” which stands for “topic,” “topic sentence” that introduces the claim, “explanation,” “support with evidence” that has a quote or paraphrase, “commentary” which provides analysis, and “clincher.”
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