Alien Pedagogy

While reading The Odyssey, our focus has been developing the ability to analyze cultural norms revealed by text. Today students demonstrated this style of analysis through speeches and/ or reflective writing.

We began with a focused group discussion on whether it’s ever OK to give up, re-read the section that we’d study intensively and then groups began to identify key words and concepts required to analyze “The Lotus Eaters.” We listed the best concepts (more than once including drugs, responsibility, escape, obedience, home) on the board and from there went on to do RAFT writing (which I use based on recommendation from Jim Lerch, though Dr. Rojas also mentioned it at the EARCOS conference).

• Role – Odysseus
• Audience – His men who are high on the Lotus
• Format – Persuasive speech
• Topic – Why they should return to the boat

The students wrote. They were required to use at least five of six key concepts written on the board. They then read aloud. From there, they wrote the values The Odyssey attempts to convey.

Reflection:

• Student questions on theme were insightful.
• Student questions on grammar revealed more desire to take risks than usual – they manipulated tense and even used prefixes.
• Voice happened.
• “How do you think Odysseus would feel when he sees his men lazing about?” led to stronger readings.
• The values and evidence discussed in the final activity demonstrated a strong understanding of the text.

On the whole, it was quite an enjoyable lesson for students. It was also effective.

When I was in school, I was required to give presentations but was rarely given time to practice public speaking.

So here’s how my speaking drill lesson goes.

• Identify / Re-list speaking skills. I use the skills identified in Holt’s Elements of Language.
• Students Identify Goals in Writing – Based on skills that are identified, past lessons and feedback, or past experiences.
• Digital Projector Slide Show – I collect ten slides and project them without label. Students use this to generate topics and opinion statements. Over time, I invite students to begin collecting these images.
• Preparation Time. Tell students how much time they need to speak and how much time they have to prepare.
• Speeches. I usually ask 9s to speak for one minute at first, working with just a hook, an introduction, one argument, a conclusion, and call to action. I also use time signals.
• Feedback is immediate. This can be done through self reflection, peer coaching, or teacher feedback. I once sat in the seat of the student that was speaking and wrote feedback in their notebook.

The biggest improvements that I have seen are that students tend to look less at the slide, they tend to produce better summative presentations, and their topics and opinions become more interesting given practice.

My lesson on exaggeration and farce (in preparation for The Brute) went well.

On the board, I’d written that students were expected to understand concepts “exaggeration” and “farce,” be able to identify ways to tell that an author is writing in a farcical tone, and analyze why we’re attracted to farce.

• We started by distinguishing truth from exaggeration. I told two stories and asked students to vote whether I was truthful for exaggerating. We then shared our own stories in groups.
• We then identified a list of human characteristics (ex/ confused, angry, and beautiful) and from there broke into groups of two. Each group had one person that represented the “true characteristic” and one person that represented the exaggeration. Then they switched roles (The best was tall, in which the shortest girl in the class was “tall” and then the tallest person in the class stood on a chair and looked down at her to represent exaggeration). I asked students to journal their definitions of exaggeration, inviting them to draw whenever possible. They were good notes.
• There was a lot of laughter in our truth vs exaggeration activity, which worked well with my introduction to farce. We identified common jokes that can be found in farce and made connections to popular movies including Scary Movie 4 *.
• From here we worked on ways that one expresses farce in written English by taking a statement made in MSN and then applying techniques of exaggeration. Sadly, there are no emoticons in The Brute, but we otherwise, we produced a solid list that we’ll be able to use while reading the text.
• The class was open at this point and we came up with some theories about why people enjoy farce. Journal.
• Review concepts as a class.

I felt that the lesson was successful, though I feel some guilt that there were few tangible resources in this lesson and in some ways it required very little preparation. However, it included student interaction through speaking, listening, and action. There were cultural references to frame student comprehension. Even my most reluctant readers took notes.

* I have not watched Scary Movie 4, but it was easy to pretend that I had.

I broke today’s exam review into stations. It worked well, so here it is.

I waited until one minute after class began to let students into class and broke them into groups of five while they were still in the hallway. When they came in, they had to put their backpacks in one corner to allow for movement. There was an unusual seating arrangement.

Five stations, five minutes per station. Each station has a question like:

• Mechanics: Write a works cited for “The Gift of the Magi.”
• Analytic Terminology: Explain the difference between personification, metaphor, and simile. Explain how they are similar.
• Writing Form: Turn the following five phrases into a one-sentence thesis statement.
• Interpretation and Analysis
• Comparison / Contrast

Content Review: There was a ten minute mega-station that every group did at the end.

We then used the digital projector to create answers and refresh processes that we’d gone over during class.

I pointed out the daily exam study questions that I’d put on Moodle for them to use as well as the quizlet flashcard review that I’d set up. (Many students have just printed the set, so they don’t show up as users.)

The last minutes of class were about stress and study procedures.

The major assessment of our poetry unit was a presentation.

Students were given a variety of tasks to prepare for this assignment. Here are the ones that were meant to prepare them for the presentation:

• Class reading of “Ballad of Birmingham” that focused on identifying three poetic techniques, an interpretation of the theme, and the identification of key quotes. We began with making a plan to read poetry strategically before we began to read.
• One class to form partners, choose poems from the poetry collection, and make strategies for reading those poems.
• One class of reader’s theater to push the idea of reading poetry creatively as a group.
• One class to create a point-form outline of analysis.
• Class reading of “Woman Work” that streamlined our reading process that began with “Ballad of Birmingham.”
• Homework Assignment: Finding Poetic Techniques in Popular Culture (the best was an analysis of the logo of a laxative)
• One class of Bob Ross notes on speaking skills.
• One class that required students to in pairs organized a speech that related to one of ten slides shown to them at the start of class.
• One class to link their outlines to slides.
• Presentations.

Almost every task in this unit was designed to maximize student success in the major assessment. So as long as the major assessment is directly related to our curriculum goals (and I think it is), then this may qualify as the most focused unit I’ve ever taught.