reflection+for+English+interns



Melissa's lesson:

For 10th grade English during the Crucible unit, I wanted to make summarizing the content more interactive than simply regurgitating the material. So, after finishing Act 2, I had students take on different characters and write several Facebook statuses and several tweets as those characters. Not only did they have to internalize what happened in the act, they had to paraphrase the material in their own words and do so from the perspective of one the characters. They could use modern language and have fun with it, as long as the language was appropriate and they made their comments believable based on their character's actions/personality. When they were done, they had to swap their paper with several other people who were different characters than themselves and then comment on the statuses and tweets to simulate an ongoing conversation online. The comments also had to be from the perspective of Crucible characters. I had them switch at least 2-3 times and when everyone had a chance to read and comment on others, we opened it up to the whole class and shared some of the best statuses and comments and talked about why they got such positive reactions (address author's purpose and target audience). The students loved this activity because let's face it, Facebook and Twitter are much more interesting to sophomores than The Crucible, #getreal.

koroleff@msu.edu

For 7th grade English, I am always looking for ways for students to connect to the text. My students were going to read "King Midas and the Golden Touch", so I wanted them thinking about the value of money and family. Knowing that my students love to talk, I created a four corner game that had students react to questions about the value of money versus family. **I did this activity before they read the text.** My students reacted very well to the activity, although I gave them explicit instructions and monitored them closely. I think the students had a fun time with it, and some of them connected it to the reading we did the following day. However, I would change the questions so that they were more even in terms of students in each corner. Out of the 3 questions I had, the last one had students spread individually, which was what I wanted to have. Another problem I had was when speaker's shared out because the other students would not listen at times. I fixed this by having the speakers form a circle in the middle of the room. This way I could monitor the "listening" section of the class while the other students presented their group's ideas/opinions. koleanka@msu.edu

In my 12th grade English class, we were beginning a new unit on Leadership: The Responsibility of the Electorate. We'll be reading 1984 and Animal Farm. In order to get students thinking about what a leader would be a utopian society, I asked them to brainstorm some of their own personal leaders and then we would come together and make a list of qualities that a leader should possess. Once we created this list, students were to narrow them down to 10 must-have qualities, which really got students talking and debating. The students were really engaged and they used real-life examples such as Clinton and Nixon to back up their claims for whatever quality they were arguing for. The only downside of this activity was that while it engaged students and got them talking, sometimes the talking was chaotic, even if it was on task. Next time, I think i'll have students pair or group up and create their own list and then compare with other groups in order to add more structure to the activity.