After finishing the movie The Crucible, it was time to transition to the revolutionary period of literature. I began by wrapping up the colonial/Puritan period. I asked students to contribute information they had in their head on in their notes about qualities of the colonial period. They did an okay job recalling some things (with my hints). I added the things after their list that I wanted to make sure they remembered or had refreshed before we began the next section. I had a handout notetaking guide for them, and had my notes up on the overhead. I asked questions during this lecture to try and liven it up, but it seems when students are busy writing everything down they can’t multitask to respond to a question. I suggested the notetaking skill of summarizing what I have written so that they only have the information they need to remember it, but I think most students still copy everything word for word.
We did one of Ms. Hogue’s creative and awesome activities with Speak in CE9 today. The activity is “Analyzing the Pledge of Allegiance.” The main character in Speak doesn’t use her freedom of speech to tell people what terrible thing has happened to her. We learned the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and then broke it apart to see what it really means. It was interesting to see how many students didn’t know what some of the words in the pledge mean (although this was the expected response to get them thinking about what they’re really pledging to and what it means to them to recite it). They then were asked to write pledges for Melinda and another character in the book, and also one for themself. They reflected on the activity by writing a short paragraph at the end of the assignment. Overall students did very well on this and the objectives were met.
