EDSITEment: The Best of the Humanities on the Web
http://edsitement.neh.gov
EDSITEment is a great website for teachers of humanities subjects. Although it is not solely a literature website, it has quite a comprehensive database of lesson plans. Although most of the lesson plans are specifically related to particular texts which might not be relevant for our purposes, I found the organization of the plans quite substantive and the format might be useful for when we are planning our own lessons. The site also provides quite a number of highly regarded external sources of background information related to particular themes and texts.
3 ideas:
1. Using venn diagrams and charts to teach characterisation, themes and literary elements
The site suggests using pictorial elements especially during group work to help students to organize their thoughts. This will come in handy when they have to work on bigger projects like essays. Visual learners will also benefit from this.
2. Using background external resources as a pre-activity
The site suggests using external resources such as essays, historical documents, letters, articles etc as background for the text they are about to read.
3. Incorporating art and new media to teach literature
The site suggests in a particular creative writing lesson to use a painting as a lead in to creative poetry writing. They also make similar suggestions with film, audio and pictorials.
Review of the ideas:
1. I found the use of charts and diagrams very good in terms of benefitting students who are more visual learners. It also makes a subject that might be considered threatening to certain students more approachable.
2. Background resources and info when approaching a text (esp poetry) is not something that was used in my time. I think that it will benefit students immensely by broadening their minds to issues related to texts. It helps incorporate real world contexts in the lessons as well.
3. Incorporating new media works in line with incorporating ICT into the classroom. It might not always be easy or appropriate but the website suggests some very creative and effective ways to do so.
Hi Liz, I agree with you that the use of background resources is not something that was used widely in Literature lessons in the past. I liked the Edgar Allan Poe page on your site (http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/edgar-allan-poe-ambrose-bierce-and-unreliable-biographers) because it asks very interesting questions. I think students will be hooked by this lesson on authors dying under mysterious circumstances, and whether this biographical information will/should affect our reading of their works.
ReplyDeleteDear Liz, have you checked out this site: http://newsletter.schoolbox.com/2010/04/05/the-plot-thickens-a-graphic-organizer-for-teaching-writing/? I thought this really ties in with what you said about visual learners and how it helps with the writing of essays. Personally, I am a visual learner, and the techniques you have suggested will really help me if I were your student. What I am talking about, I was already your student. :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't use visual techniques when I tutored you though, did I! Haha!
DeleteThanks for the link. It looks really cool.
Yup, one of the things we didn't deal with that could be quite important is biography, historicism and new historicism - in some ways, knowing the background of an author or the times in which a text was written helps us understand a text and the place of the text better.
ReplyDeleteJust saw the lesson feature on Things Fall Apart - Nice ideas and quite comprehensive. Contents list is also deals with interesting - classic and contemporary literary texts.
ReplyDeleteHi Liz,
ReplyDeleteI especially like the idea of equipping students with background information and contextual knowledge before studying a particular text. Unfortunately, as teachers, we always face a time limit to cover all aspects of the text itself during curriculum time, so this is a bit difficult to do. Hence, this website is a great avenue to direct students to so that they can be assigned to do specific readings and complete some reasearch before they approach the text. :)