ENGL 235 Blog Posts

 This was a short unit, covering 3 readings addressing podcasts and other audio-based assignments and their benefits. The first article is by Deirdre Faughey, titled "Can We Do This?": Cocreating Curriculum with a Twenty-First-Century Mindset. This article talked about opening up classrooms to the 21st century, in embracing technology and gadgets, and having students do projects and assignments using this technology. The teacher/author talks about their fear of having the students do a final paper on Romeo and Juliet, which they had just read, because she thought that the students would be half-hearted about it. She instead chose to introduce the students to podcasts, and expose them to the value of audio recordings to organize and present information for an audience. She shared examples of podcasts with students, talked about music groups and other relevant topics that would engage the students and help them see the value in podcasts. She then provided the students with plan...

Unit 6 covered a lot about students and their voices, being able to convey what they mean to on a platform that provides feedback and reception, as well as knowing how to properly pass the specific messages in the manner that will guarantee the best reception and feedback that they are looking for. In the first article of this unit, title Looking for Evidence, the author speaks about the value and importance of students learning how to differentiate between fact and opinion, and how valuable of a skill this is for students. As well, the author talks about the importance for students to be able to tell the difference between persuasion and argument, and to be able to create their own persuasions and arguments, both written and orally. They describe the 3 elements of argument, that being the claim, evidence, and reasons behind it, as well as the author or speaker value of knowing alternative or opposing claims, understanding opposing views to their argument and the source of these views....

 This unit had a heavy emphasis on technology and how important/large of a role it plays in society, especially for our youths. The first article we covered is called Unearthing the Problem: Social Emotional Learning in the High School Classroom. This was a very interesting article as it addressed the use of cellphones (or technology in general) and how much our use of them impacts our lives and gets in the way of our goals. The author talks about a time they worked with their students to analyze their cellphone use, and had the students come up with personal goals that they wanted to accomplish in relation to using the technology less or getting rid of certain apps, in order to focus on certain goals that they had and were struggling to achieve (less time spent on the phone, read more books, get grades up/study more, etc.). The teacher also joined the students in this activity, making sure not to keep themselves out of it and seeming like they themselves were not struggling with s...

 For this unit, we addressed using process drama within the classroom to help students comprehend literature and lessons, and to help them make it their own. We covered several different articles, all of which I will break down and talk about how I can use them in my future classes. The first article is called Using Drama Strategies to Foster Interpretation. This article addresses numerous ways in which teachers can utilize drama within their classroom, providing both specific types of drama and the activities that can be done with them. This includes hot-seating, role-playing, discussion dramas, and tableaux vivant to name just a few. Each type is defined in detail, noting exactly how the individual activity type benefits the students differently than the others. The article talks about the benefits of drama towards cultural understanding, students utilizing information from their text more personally, and how the involved process of having students act out as characters helps bui...

  Unit 3 Blog The first article that we addressed in this unit, Graphic Novels: The good, the Bad, and the Ugl y, was a pretty straight-forward article essentially introducing what graphic novels are, their origins, how they caught on, how they vary, and how they can be used in a classroom. The author is an educator and regularly gives speeches at conferences, but realized during a question one day that he simply knew nothing about comics and decided to get educated on them. The article is presented as a Q&A-type read, with common questions being presented and then the author answering them afterwards. It is a great read for anyone looking to become more informed on what comics/graphic novels are, how they can be useful in classrooms, and why they haven’t been fully implemented or embraced by a lot of educators and school districts. This is a great read to start the unit off, filling in any unknowns for students as they have the information about comics presented clearly to the...

 Welcome back to my blog TO and class! For this most recent unit, we addressed the application of alternative lesson types and utilizing more than just writing and text-based assignments to analyze student understanding. The first article of this unit is titled "The Green Knight Should be Green: Graphic Response to Literature." This article by William J Broz delves into having students use alternative, artsy projects (graphic interpretations) to express what they learned in a text. Although this was originally done to break up his routine weekly work, he received fantastic, unique projects from all of his students. These projects expressed "insightful interpretations of the literature," which allowed the students to depict what they individually connected to, as well as showing how the literature was perceived by them. Another benefit of this kind of assignment is that students have to be specific with their project, unlike with essays where they can be more broad a...