What's Going on in 205

There are only two weeks left in third quarter.  I can't wait for fourth quarter!  Bring on the spring weather.  The first day when I can wear khaki shorts and flip flops to school is a might fine day in my world.

College Comp II -

We are finishing up our Sticky-Note Book Reports. Last week I was fortunate enough to have Mrs. Weets and Mr. Mclean come in and model book talks based on the books they have been reading.  Mrs. Weets talked about the amazing book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Mr. Mclean shared from Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life.

They modeled a passion for reading, as well as how vital staying knowledgable through books is to their lives.  While they spoke, I tried to draw connections to the books my students were finishing up or to the texts we had read in class already.  This is what Seth Godin calls "connecting the dots, not collecting the dots."

The next day, I gave my book talk on Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You.  More will come on that book as I'm going to re-read it and blog my thoughts.

On Thursday we started our own book talks.

Tomorrow we should be able to finish all of the book talks.

The final assignment will be for students to investigate one interesting aspect of their books and write a hyper-text essay which they post to a blog which they create specifically for their books.

Here are some examples from the past.

Here are the books the students are reading this semester: Freakonomics, Tipping Point, The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, Grown Up Digital, The Dip, Making a Difference, What You're Really Meant to Do, Into Thin Air, The Devil in the White City, Brick by Brick, Imagine, Teach Like a Pirate, The Last Lecture, Tuesdays With Morrie, and Enchantment.

College Comp I -

Students just submitted their third theme, a how to essay, and are now working on the first of four essays that will combined into theme four, a braided essay.

This is a lead up to our first research paper based on their first novel.

In years past, I always had students choose two novels with similar themes and then at the end of the semester, they'd write an 8-12 page research paper either analyzing three themes the novels had in common or three character traits that the main characters shared.

This worked very well and was the crowning achievement of the semester.

But over the years I began think about changing this format a little.  The main reason was that students had to pick two novels that worked together or were written by the same author.  This usually worked well, say for All Quite on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms or Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.  Yet, there were times that one books was clearly superior to the other. As a result, students struggled to find any research on their second novel. This was the case with The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise or The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey.

Another factor was that often students would read their first novel early in the semester.  Then they'd wait until the end of the semester to start writing their papers. While it would be easy for them to recall their second novel, which was read during the final quarter of the semester, they would often struggle to remember everything from their first novel necessary for their research paper.  Imagine reading Of Mice and Men in September and then trudging through The Grapes of Wrath over Christmas vacation and then having to write a comparison paper on them in January.

And maybe the deciding factor in my decision was that often times students neglected to choose a classic text, such as Pride and Prejudice or The Scarlet Letter, because those novels didn't work with the other novel they had selected.  For example, you might really want to read two classics like Jane Eyre and Huck Finn, yet those novels have nothing to do with each other.  So often times students settled for reading - in my opinion - "lesser" novels that worked well with their other novel selections (and here I'm specifically thinking of Franny and Zooey and This Side of Paradise.)  I figured if a student really wants to read first The Catcher in the Rye and then The Great Gatsby, why shouldn't they be able to do that? I mean like it or not, these students will likely never read great literature again!  Why not let them sample the best of the best while they still have the chance?

So here is what I came up with -

For their first novels (I told them to select the novel that most appealed to them on the entire list) they will write multi-genre literary research papers.  For more info, go here and here.

Then for their second novels (I told them to select a novel that will push or stretch them as readers and thinkers), they will write a traditional research paper.