Thinking out a unit

With our first quarter at an end, I’ve turned my attention toward the second half of my Advanced Writing class. Since this is the first time I’ve taught it and since I’m following someone else’s curriculum, I’m caught between following the curriculum while putting my own twist on it.

Our next essay is going to be a literary analysis. I very much want to analyze “Young Goodman Brown.” However, I have quite a bit of extra time on my hands (last year this class was taught in nine weeks; this year I have an entire semester to teach it), so I’m going to delve in deeper than the former teacher could last year. But the problem always arises - how to go about getting the students ready to analyze a work of literature, especially one as daunting as “Young Goodman Brown” (my choice for the finest story in American Literature)? While this is going on students are also reading their first of two novels they will need to read in order to write their final essay, a major comparison/contrast paper on the novels. So I really want to work on hitting strategies and ideas that students will need to use not only for “YGB” but also for their novels.

I’ve been plowing my way through a couple of excellent texts to generate some ideas - namely “The English Teacher’s Companion” by Jim Burke and “The Reading/Writing Connection” by Carol Booth Olson. Both have offered excellent strategies for generating strategies for generating questions and activating higher order thinking skills.

Our last theme was a film review of Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” so students will be familiar with analyzing a work of art for meaning and symbols. I hope to build on that as we move to our newest theme. To do so, I plan to start students out with a poem. My original thought is to use “The Tyger” by William Blake. I want to use this as a way of talking about the strategies and ideas suggested by Burke and Olson. For instance, Olson talks about strategies/types of knowledge students need to comprehend a work of literature. First, students need “declarative knowledge,” which means having the knowledge or understanding of certain important basics of reading, such as the fact that the title of a work is important or that there is a protagonist and an antagonist or that there is a difference between nonfiction and fiction. Second, students move on to “procedural knowledge,” which deals with students having the ability to know ‘how’ to attain certain information from a text, such as knowing how to use a double sided journal to keep track of important quotes and students’ reactions to those quotes or knowing how to make connections within a text. Finally, students need “conditional knowledge,” which deals with students knowing ‘when’ to use certain strategies and to know ‘why’ they are effective, such as knowing how compare themes from various works and revise for meaning as they read.

Whoa. That was a lot of there. With these in mind, I want to look at a poem with my students and walk them through the three types of knowledge. What I like about “The Tyger” is not only the symbolism and allusion to “The Lamb,” but also how it can be read at least three ways (as an allegory of good and evil - how could the one who created the lamb create the tiger? as a statement about the industrial revolution - Blake was a romantic and hated the evils the industrial revolution ushered in - all of the sinister industrial imagery - what the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? and finally some critics have suggested - and I find this the most interested interpretation - interpreting the poem as a commentary on the creative process - does the author, who struggles to create, have an obligation for how their work is taken and interpreted - for example, a writer writes a story about a school shooting which influences someone to mimic it. Is he/she responsible. A few critics have read “The Tyger” this way). So we would walk through those strategies as we analyzed Blake’s poem and discussed how we came to our conclusions.

Next, I am thinking of moving from the poem to a short story. I am thinking of using a relatively ‘fluffy’ story (one that isn’t quite as ‘heavy’ as “YGB”), like “The Storm” by McKnight Malmar. What I like about this story is that it can be read two different ways. The other isn’t overt in their plot or description, so their is some vagueness about what happens, which calls for the reader to make connections on their own as to what happens. Here we again would look at how we applied Olson’s ideas to this story.

After “The Storm” I am thinking of moving into some serious literature. The first story I think I’ll use is Tim O’brien’s “The Things They Carried,” which I believe to be the best story written in the past 50 years (I believe it was John Updike who called it the best short story of the 20th Century). Here we’d look at the story mainly for theme. We’d begin to discuss how characterization, plot, symbolism, and other techniques can be used to illustrate theme.

That will lead us into “YGB.” Since I have so much time, I am thinking of assigning it to be read over the weekend. I don’t know if I’ll give them any kind of reading guide to help them or if I’ll have them keep a double sided journal or something like that. Maybe I’ll let them choose from a strategy we’ve discussed and develop their own way for working through the text without any interference from me.

Then when students return on Monday, we’ll discuss it some. I don’t want to dig right into it because I would like to have the students listen to an audio version of it that I downloaded from itunes. Here I think I’ll have them keep track of things that they noticed on the second ‘reading’ that they missed on the first time through. Then I’ll have them write on why they missed them. Hopefully, this will lead us into some interesting discussions on reading and the value of re-reading.

I hope to schedule one full block where we can really rip into “YGB.” I might divide the students into groups and assign them specific things to analyze (such as symbols, themes, form, social commentary, allegory, and so on) and then discuss their findings. I also have a few secondary sources I’d like to share with them on the story. This could be a good spot to briefly introduce MLA documentation and citation and using secondary sources.

Once all of that is done, I’ll give the students the choice to write their literary analysis on either “The Things They Carried” or “Young Goodman Brown.” It would be interesting to see what the students who choose to do “The Things They Carried” would see after reading “YGB.” Hmmmm.

Then we’ll have several days to build our essays, peer edit, revise, read rough drafts, revise, and finally submit.

For their next essay, I’m thinking of showing the film “The Village” and having them write a comparison/contrast essay between that and “YGB.” But students might be sick of it then.

Of course, all of this is still hazy. But it’s got my juices so fired up that it’s damn near ten o’clock on a Tuesday night and I’m doing this instead of showering and going to bed. Which, by the way, is what I’m going to do right now . . .