What's Happening in Sophomore English
Choice and cooperation provide greater opportunity for everyone to learn
by Michael Pickman
Beginning a unit on how culture influences writing, students were presented with a question to relate the material to life: What will it take to end discrimination?
As we explored this topic, the students tapped into their learning styles by choosing from a variety of choices to express their views. Students could create a song expressing their views (for the auditory learner); students could act out a skit expressing their views (for the expressive and kinesthetic learner); students could create a poster with catch phrase expressing their ideas (for the visual learner); or they could create a Top Ten list (for the spatial learner). Providing for the various ways students learn can help maintain interest, increase engagement, and facilitate meaningful connections.
There were great songs with awesome choreography, some very thoughtful and well-acted skits, contemplative top tens, and a nice array of posters. Each product was unique and yet had a common message of understanding being the key to ending discrimination: acceptance rather than tolerance. It was a great jumping off point to show why it is important to be able to understand culture, and being able to read to identify the impact of culture is an important skill, especially today.
Students also worked together using cooperative learning, a strategy that promotes learning from each other and finding groups member's individual strengths to help each other where weaknesses exist. It also keeps everyone involved and promotes group skills while still holding each member accountable, simulating a real working environment.
So as we begin our unit studying culture and writing, we will primarily use the mythologies of culture's and the creation of mankind stories from various cultures. These are creative and vibrant stories full of cultural influence.
As we continued through, students had choices projects to complete where they teach us about section of mythologies and explain the cultural significance found in the writing.
If you have any questions, please let me know, and be sure to ask your students about their products.
