Classics in the Classroom - Chapter Seven

When I was in Jr. High and High school I loved to read, but when I was in a particularly ornery mood and I just didn't feel like doing work, my favorite complaint was, "Why do I have to read this? It doesn't apply to my life at all!" Jago also encounters this problem and offers a lesson from Julius Caesar in which she tells students to consider who would be a better president: Brutus, Antony, Caesar, or Cassius. I love this activity because she asks to students to back up their choices with examples from the book by looking at rhetoric, character, and the various lives of the characters. This allows these students to choose real world leaders in their own lives. And in a time when so many politicians can talk around an issue, manipulate the words, and spin rhetoric as easily as a spider spinning a web, students need to be as savvy as possible.


Jago lists skills students need to know for the standardized tests:

• Close reading of the text
• Character analysis
• Drawing inferences
• Application
  
• Evaluation

These skills are obviously useful and necessary for everyday life, and providing tests and activities in the classroom that push students to learn them is vital. Jago suggests one type of test that involves answering questions with a well developed paragraph. She then goes quickly through the answers, grading on content. Then she does something I really love, she picks out exemplary answers and then she has stuesnt read the model responses in aloud in class, so students whose answers were sub-par can review their answers and learn what's missing. One of my professors did this and I loved it; peer review and learning from other peers is a really great tool.

I want to end this blog entry with a quote from Jago that I believe ties in well with students wondering how the text is applicable to their lives, "...students discover the heroic dimension of their own lives." How great and wonderful is it that a text written years and years ago can still be applied to a students life and can show that student something about themselves? I guess that's one of the amazing things about classics; they hold a mirror up to our lives and help us discover the "heroic dimensions" of our lives.

Classics in the Classroom-Chapter Five

Jago opens this chapter on poetry reading with a reference to the fact that music/songs are very similar to poems. I love this! Close reading of a poetry can be practiced and compared to close reading of lyrics and close listening to of a song. Songs have many of the same elements as a poem: rhyme, rhythm, imagery, etc.; and close "reading" of a song can help a student understand and enjoy a difficult poem.

I decided to close read the song Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap to demonstrate how easy it is to practice for poetry reading. (I"ll put the lyrics down and then my interpretation next to or below them).

Where are we?
What the hell is going on?

--This confusion to me, represents confusion between two people, as in confusion over a relationship.

The dust has only just begun to fall - The relationship hasn't been over very long
crop circles in the carpet - Pacing
Sinking feeling

Spin me round again - The relationship has done a 360 from good to bad
And rub my eyes - It's over and like a child waking up and rubbing their eyes to see more clearly, this person is trying to clearly understand what's happening.

This can't be happening

When busy streets a mess with people - Could be referring to "this can't be happening" busy people in a street are always busy and going somewhere in hurry;
Would stop to hold their heads heavy - And to stop and hang their heads is silly and impossible..just like the end of the relationship.

Hide and Seek - One is hiding their emotions and the other is seeking them and understanding
Trains and sewing machines (Oh you can't catch me around here) - Trains are connected in our minds to movement and traveling/escape whereas sewing machines are for putting things together and keeping them that way and so trains and sewing machines over a contradiction.
(Blood, tears, hearts) - Blood and tears and always running and moving, and this person's heart is broken and needs to mended and sewn.
All those years
They were here first

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before the takeover - Oily marks are left where pictures of pleasurable moments the couple had used to hang before the breakup or "takeover".

The sweeping insensitivity of this still life - The still life is the frozen images of the pictures and the happy times and frozen images are indifferent and insensitive to the present situation and heart ache of the break up.

Mmmm, whatcha you say,
Mmm that you only meant well?
Well of course you did
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmm that it's all for the best?
Of course it is
Mmmm whatcha say?
Mmm that it's just what we need (You decided this)
Whatcha say?
Mmmm what did you say?

All of these are common things to say in a break up: "I meant well", "this is for the best", "this is what we need to do", all of these are meant to make a person feel better, but really they just make you feel worse.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth - What's being held ransom? Perhaps the person saying all the above things is holding the other persons heart ransom.
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs - Newspapers are often very cold and emotionless stories, just reporting the facts; the words the one person is saying are cold and emotionless like a newspaper story.

Speak no feeling no I don't believe you
You don't care a bit
You don't care a bit

In a previous chapter Jago quotes form an article that says what end up in a students memory is what they were thinking of when the read/heard something. So if a student attaches a feeling, emotion, or memory with a song they can do the same thing with poetry, making it all the more manageable and memorable. This son means something specific and special to me and I interpreted it this way because I connect it to a certain event in my life. Poetry is the same way and by seeing how they can connect to a poem the same way they connect to a song, students can become more comfortable about poetry.

The literary devices found in this song are:

Rhyme: The beat of the song.

Imagery: The lyrics paint the picture of oily stands on the walls where picutres used to hang and this image is so sad and depressing. Ultimately the lyrics create a mood of sadness, loss, and confusion.

Symbol: "Crop circles in the carpet" and "ransom notes keep falling out your mouth" are obviously symbolizing something else because an alien is not drawing crop circles in the carpet and ransom notes most likely are not falling out of a persons mouth.

Theme: Where are we? What's going on? Are the songs base for a theme of confusion and disbelief.

Tone: Words like sinking feeling, whatcha say?, and hide and seek all convey a sense of sadness and confusion.

What's great about his song is that, like poetry, there are many different interpretations of it. A quick search on Youtube reveals that some people think it's about the Holocaust, animal abuse, or even the 9/11 attacks.

I realize Jago only mentioned the song poetry reference in the beginning of the chapter, but I just felt like it's such a wonderful tool and I really want to use it with my students. The whole chapter has great incites and I'll definitely come back to it when I need a reference or ideas in the future.

Classics in the Classroom - Chapter Four

Being a teenager is rough - your going through all sorts of strange new emotions and new experiences, and often times you end up feeling powerless. Well, Jago suggests a way to give students back some of the power that they seem to be lacking: "I believe it is out job not simply to drag students through a series of books but rather to show them how stories work. By succeeding in this endeavor, we help students acquire power over text."

The tools to gaining power over a text include understanding the elements of literature: plot and structure, character, setting, point of view, style and language, symbol, and theme. I loved how Jago says just because a novel is difficult or the elements of the novel are unfamiliar we should not shortchange our students - they can use the above tools to navigate through a novel. like Jago provides the example of Jack London's Call of the Wild, student use of literary elements will allow them to interpret the text and understand the deeper meaning of the story.

I've been a student for most of my life, and so when in an English class of either high school or college, I usually dread hearing the words literary devices. Immediately my mind frantically searches for the meanings of each device, all of which are at the tip of my tongue/mind, and then I frantically scribble in notes each definition so I'll pass the test. I don't want this to be the case with my students. Jago explains that these devices shouldn't be used to punish students on a test, but instead they should be seen as just another building block of success and power over a novel. I do believe these devices need to be taught, but as a new teacher, I don't want to be boring either, and if taught in the wrong way these devices can be quite dry. But on the other hand, not everything worth learning is fun and games. How do I find a nice balance? Is learning about literary devices comparable to swallowing your medicine....it tastes awful going down, but in the end it's good for you? Or maybe I can take a Mary Poppin's approach and give a "spoon full of sugar" to help the medicine go down? Lot's of questions any responses would be appreciated.

I mentioned in the fist paragraph that teaching students the tools to understanding literature will empower them to conquer a text and this victory over the text will lead to new understandings and new ideas - despite my questions and concerns about teaching the tools, I can't wait to help empower students.

Classics in the Classroom-Chapter Two

Student's don't read because they don't have enough of a well-developed vocabulary to understand the text, but they can't develop a vocabulary unless they read the text - this dilemma presents a vicious cycle. As a teacher, I can break this cycle by providing vocabulary enriching texts, which may be challenging, but accompanied with the right teaching methods, will provide my students with better, more developed vocabularies.

On page 26 of Classics in the Classroom, Jago offers some examples of vocabulary lessons that work. She has her tenth-grade students reading The Fall of the House of Usher (Yeah Edgar Allan Poe =), and the students pick out tricky or unknown words. She then follows the steps set down by Stahl and Shiel (1992): she and her students find the prefix and the suffix in the word entombment (en-prefix, ment-suffix), and then she has the students look at the context of the word miasma (which I didn't know, but now I do), and last she had students discuss Poe's vocabulary choice and how it makes them feel. I was a little confused about this last step of semantic groupings...is it grouping words according to emotion they evoke or should they be grouped by parts of speech? Whatever the correct answer, I think grouping words by the emotions they evoke is a much easier way of remembering the word.

"Some look at the language gap between high-performing students and low-performing students and give up hope." Well I don't want to give up hope, and so the next section gives great tips on successful/unsuccessful lesson plans. I really liked the point she made on page 32 about admitting when you don't know something and being willing to learn along with the students. One of the things I, and I'm sure anyone who has ever wanted to be a teacher, fear is not knowing the answer. But, if I just admit it and try and figure it out with my students, I'm sure I'll earn their respect and hopefully cover my lack of information in the process :)

I actually did the activity presented on pages 33-37 and I thought it was great! I've never read "Julius Caesar" (something I will totally remedy in the near future) and I was able to establish a really cool character sketch using the key words Jago suggested to her students.

I think the most important thing to remember about vocabulary is that I want to present words that are challenging, but also practical. I want my students to be able to use their vocabulary, not only in their reading, but also in conversations for the rest of their lives.