Reading in the Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools, Spring, 2010

I plan to teach high school English, so I found a lesson plan that caters to students in grades 9-12. The lesson is called “A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors’ Lives”-- http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/biography-study-using-role-398.html.
This lesson incorporates English and drama in a very creative way, in which students analytical and creative skills are put to use. Essentially, students will research a particular American author, gathering as many facts about their character as possible, and then must appear before a panel and respond to questions in the form and mannerisms of that particular author. Students have to figure out how they think their author would handle themselves in person. This lesson allows for students who are talented with theater or performance to shine, whereas they may typically take a back seat to some of the students who are good at researching and writing. Through this activity, the authors come to life for the students; they are not just researching, but they are basically becoming the author for a few minutes. In providing an unusual and non standard way for students to learn about a writer, I believe that teachers who use this lesson will receive positive feedback and will find that their students actually enjoy the assignment to some degree or another.
This lesson also calls for students to create a timeline and biopoem for their particular author. The timeline is useful because it allows them to get a grasp on the time period in which the author was living, so that they can get a better feel for how society was run during their time (ultimately revealing how their mannerisms may have been). The biopoem helps the students channel into the emotions and personality of their author, which ultimately helps them shape how they will dramatize in front of the panel.
After the panel discussion, students then write an essay about their author and are called to reflect on their experience. I think the reflection process is very important and would provide great insight onto how the students’ perceived the lesson and whether or not they thought it to be an effective way of learning about an American author.
The readwritethink website is an extremely useful resource. There are so many good lesson plans on the site, and each plan has several links to help teachers effectively carry out the lesson. I love how the particular lessons have links to grading rubrics, preparations, websites, etc. that will help to make the teaching of this lesson effective. I know that I will certainly be using this website when I begin planning for my classroom.

Response to Anticipation Guide exercise...

I don't think I have ever done an anticipation guide in any of my classes before, but I think it is a very useful tool. I really like the fact that it allows students to process and analyze information before, during, and after they gather it. It is extremely useful that I had to fill out the anticipation guide before reading anything about the topic because it kind of started my thinking process to be geared toward the article's subject. Usually when I read something, I just pick it up and skim it and then try and think about the information it presented, rather than thinking about how I feel about the topic prior to reading it and, ultimately, reflecting on what opinions of mine it challenged or corrected. I think that teachers probably have better classroom discussions when using anticipation guides as well because students have had plenty of time to reflect on the subject matter. Also, students can share what information they learned from the article and compare what they learned to that of the answers they put down before reading the text. Granted, an anticipation guide is not the only form of lesson planning that teachers can use to instill pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading skills, but it is certainly a very effective way to combine all three aspects of learning. I think that filling out the anticipation guide before reading the article also made me more interested in actually reading the article, because I wanted to know if my answers were right and what the experts say about men and women and their uses of the internet. I became curious about the article since I had already formed my own opinions. Overall, I enjoyed this activity and learned a lot about effective ways to engage students and present materials.