(no subject)
I don't start student teaching until September so I have a lot of time...but I'm trying to put together year-long outlines along with unit outlines and weekly-daily lesson plans for high school language arts. I've thought long and hard about how I am going to organize the material and if I'm going to do it chronologically, culturally, or just a mix of things I like and find amusing. In the end I've decided to do it by theme. Students in my english classes will be reading books, plays, poems, speeches, seeing movies,etc. and writing pieces which surround around that year's theme. The themes I have so far are revenge, unrequited love, oppression & prejudice, mortality and the meaning of life, doubling - (use of polar opposites to emphasize or create meaning), cultured vs. savage nations, human nature, and technology & progress. That's a lot of themes....one of each I believe deserves a year of study. The result- The shared themes between all of the year's work and the material in student portfolios would attribute to a deeper understanding of what they have read and encourage them to draw connections between the different works.
Grammar, sentence construction, etc. would take place while students are working on writing assignments which would compare and contrast works, explicate characters, etc. in the form of "mini-lessons"on an as needed basis. (I believe that by 9th grade they should be able to construct a grammatically correct, complex sentence).
What I would like to know if anyone else thinks this is a good idea? or am I living in an English majors fantasy classroom? I have begin to make lists of literature, movies, etc. relevant to specific themes, so if anyone has any suggestions I would be sooo grateful.
Grammar, sentence construction, etc. would take place while students are working on writing assignments which would compare and contrast works, explicate characters, etc. in the form of "mini-lessons"on an as needed basis. (I believe that by 9th grade they should be able to construct a grammatically correct, complex sentence).
What I would like to know if anyone else thinks this is a good idea? or am I living in an English majors fantasy classroom? I have begin to make lists of literature, movies, etc. relevant to specific themes, so if anyone has any suggestions I would be sooo grateful.