Today I worked all day — PARCC remediation all morning and lesson plan writing all afternoon. I worked primarily on collecting the resources I use for three “group work” assignments: Monsters (Frankenstein), “A Wreath for Emmett Till” sonnet sequence, and Macbeth. All three lessons work similarly, and most kids like them. Before or after reading a piece of literature, students work in groups to present some outside research about or related to the work. We had done “What is a monster?” before reading Frankenstein to study people throughout history who could be considered a monster. This week I will be teaching the sonnet sequence “A Wreath for Emmett Till.” It follows our study of sonnet structure and Shakespearean sonnets, but it is a more contemporary topic and obviously relevant today. The groups look at the art, do research on the history or recent related topics, the poet and methods of narration. Before I teach Macbeth, the groups work on areas related to the psychology of good and evil. All the lessons give students practice in reading, writing and presenting and they give plenty of good ideas for future writing assignments.
Anyway, I am being observed this week so I needed to do a lot of paper work for the pre-conference. Since I am using the Emmett Till lesson, I did manage to kill two birds with one stone. Still have a lot to do…
Happy Super Bowl Sunday!
