Unit Plan Proposal

I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with my coopearting teacher for student teaching, Ms. Telega, at South Junior High to discuss the initial concepts for my unit plan that I will be teaching in the spring. She informed me that her seventh graders are ready to tackle a short story unit by the time I arrive. The list of outcomes that she gave me include plot triangle, setting, conflict, the writing process, and editing. If there is time, Ms. Telega also said, as an extra bonus, students could learn about characterization and dialogue.

For now, I will focus on the first five main outcomes and ensure that I plan quality lessons that go in-depth rather than trying to juggle too many outcomes at once. The essential questions that come from these outcomes are:
-What role or purpose does plot, setting, and conflict in short stories and why are they important to include?
-How do writers effectively use plot, setting, and conflict in short stories during the writing process and editing?

The rationale for this unit:
Through this short story unit, students will learn about another genre of literature that they may not have encountered at all before or have had limited exposure to. As they learn about plot, setting, and conflict and how it is used in short stories they read, they will simultaneously focus on how to incorporate these facets of good writing into thier own short stories. They will have the opportunity to learn about the writing process and how a writer may need a different approach to writing since it is a different genre. They will practice their editing skills as well and have the opportunity to focus on specific aspects of thier pieces as they edit and revise.

The texts I will use to accomplish the outcomes of the unit are "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Kipling and "Thank you, Ma'am" by Hughes. These are the short stories Ms. Telega wants to ensure students read during the unit but she said I could incoprporate any other texts that are appropriate. If you have any other suggestions for texts that I could use or have a favorite short story that you would like to share, I would love to hear your ideas.

The standards and skills that are associated with and will be met through this unit include...
-Use knowledge of narrative and expository text structures and subject specific texts to summarize content
-Use texts' structural organizers to aid comprehension
-Critically read and evaluate to determine the author's purpose, point of view, audience, and message
-Scan a passage to determine relevant information and skim the text to locate specific information
-Read a variety of high-quality, traditional, classical and contemporary works specific to America, as well as significant works from other countries
-Identitfy and analyze various genres and subgenres as forms with distinct characteristics and purposes
-Identify and analyze the relationships among elements of fiction including setting, character, plot, conflict/resolution, theme, and tone
-Create narratives that develop settings, people/characters, dialogue, and conflicts using descriptive, concrete language to engage audiences
-Draft-organize, support, and put ideas into sentences and paragraphs
-Revise-improve the quality of content, organization, sentence structure, and word choice
-Edit-correct errors in spelling and grammar
-Publish-produce a document and share the writing with the audience

Remaining questions and resources:
1. I would like to compile a list of potential, appropriate, quality short stories that I could choose from to add to the unit.
2. I still need to transfer the 2003 standards that Ms. Telega is still working with to the 2010 standards. I need to look through the document and find the correlating updated standards that are met with this unit.
3. Looking ahead to the assessment portion of the unit, I would like to know how Ms. Telega usually has her students share thier work with others. Is there a typcial strategy she uses or am I able to choose my own?
4. Looking even further ahead to the instruction portion of the lesson, I wonder how much freedom I will have in creating my lessons. WIll I be able to incorporate my own ideas and my own methods into the lesson or does she expect me to follow how she has done it in the past?

This is the current condition of my unit lesson plan. I am anxious to begin working on it and am motivated by the opportunity to actually implement it in a real-world classroom setting this spring. I am also looking forward to any and all feedback pertaining to my unit plan, thus far. I will enjoy reading my group members' unit plan proposals as well to learn about all the unique and insightful concepts that they have come up with.

Writing Assessment

Recently in our mid-level ELA course we have transitioned from reading instruction to writing instruction. There are many aspects of writing instruction that we have discussed such as preparing your classroom for effective writing instruction, different types of writing with different purposes and different audiences, pre, during, and post writing activities, and assessment of writing. There are many various facets of writing an ELA teacher needs to take into consideration and it can seem ovewhelming for the most expereinced educator.

The aspect of writing instruction that is the scariest for me as a future educator is the assessment of student writing. Based on my limited knowledge and experience in this area, I find it very subjective and based upon the teacher's personal preferences. No matter how detailed the rubric, it seems impossible to be completely objective when assessing student writing. The Spandell article provides some helpful advice for how to remain as objective as possible while assessing student writing. The author suggests considering the positive negative trend, trait error, appearance, length, personal preferences, preconceptions, skimming, self-scoring, and vulgar language while assessing student writing. These considerations are described in more detail in the article found at https://moodle.csbsju.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=97371. Even though these tips are useful, I still find myself skeptical about the process of assessment.

Questions that still remain in my mind involve how an educator decides what to focus on when assessing student writing. How does an educator create an effective rubric and decide what is most important to assess on a particular piece of writing. Many debates arise among those who feel that grammar and the technicalities of writing should be focused on and those who feel the content is more important. I believe both philosophies have their appropriate time and place based on the objectives that one hopes to achieve at the end. I think this is perhaps the most important lesson that I have realized thus far concerning writing assessment: assessment needs to be directly related to the objectives that have been set forth. This not only applies to writing assessment, but to all assessments in all academic disciplines as well.

My concerns have been relieved somewhat, but I still think that assessing student writing is a significant part of ELA instruction that cannot be taken lightly. Especially at the middle school age, students egos and self-esteems are so fragile and vulnerable. A teacher's opinion and comments concerning a students' writing can profoundly impact their entire lives, whether negatively or positively. I recently read Kao Kalia Yang's book, The Latehomecomer, and in it, she tells the struggle of her and her family to find their home, to find their identity. Yang does not find her home, does not find herself, until a high school English teacher gives her praise for her Romeo and Juliet essay. It was not until this moment that Yang saw herself as a writer. It is important for educators to find the balance between being too nice and only providing positive feedback and being too harsh and finding every single error in student writing and making them aware of it. It is important for educators to remain honest and constructive. I believe this balance requires experience and practice and I am sure I will continue to learn and grow in this regard throughout my career.

Please share any additional insight you may have concerning this topic. I would love to hear other, different perspectives on this issue. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and I look forward to reading yours!
Courtney B.

The Sexiness of Media Literacy

Arguably the sexiest aspect of English Language Arts, media literacy involves the interpretation and analyzation of media representations from a variety of media forms. Media representations, the ways in which the media depicts particular groups, communities, worlds, topics, or issues from a particular ideological or value perspective, go beyond "simply mirroring reality to actually constructing and shaping reality" (Beach). According to Beach, media literacy requires students to ask such critical questions as:
-Where do these representations come from?
-Who produces the representations?
-Why are they producing these representations?
-How is complexity limited by these representations?
-What is missing or silenced in these representations?

As I reached a deeper understanding of media literacy through Beach's article, one question lingered in my mind. I still wondered what the end result or objective of media literacy was. What is the purpose? What do students gain from being media literate? As I considered these questions, I realized that there seems to be differing opinions on this issue.

According to Beach, "the issue is not freeing ourselves from representations. It's really about being enlightened witnesses when we watch representations". This enlightenment can naturally lead students to create relevant counterexamples to the current media representations. Having the opportunity to depict someone or something from a different perspective can help students expand their media literacy and be more critical interactors with their culture and media.

Scharrer, on the other hand, explains how a critical view of the media does not necessarily lead to diminished media influences or create a permanent resistance to its effects. This conclusion is based upon the notion that every person is a unique individual with a unique background and personality; therefore, each person approaches media differently and is influenced differently by it.

One final perspective is brought to us by Fisherkeller who says the general goal of media literacy is to help students recognize the limits and strengths of different forms of communication. This connects back to Beach's point that media literacy requires students to interrogate the plethora of media representations that they encounter on a daily basis and recognize the power of media in our lives and the ideological and economic agendas the media producers have.

There are various, complex facets of media literacy that need to be addressed; the final outcomes of teaching media literacy is merely one of these facets that I found most intriguing. I look forward to learning more about this fascinating topic through my classmates' blogs.