Creating a Unit Plan - A Brainstorming Session

     Today was my first real day of brainstorming and seriously thinking about my unit plan.  While writing down a list of questions to consider when starting the unit plan I began contemplating the idea of what is means to be an adult.  This seemed like an interesting topic but the more that I thought about it the more I struggled with the idea of me being an adult let alone my future 7th and 8th graders being adults.  So from there I tried to simplify the question.  Who am I?  This question is found in countless volumes of young adult literature, but it is also a question that I asked myself throughout my middle school experience. 
     My next thought, being an English concentration was what kind of books or short stories could I teach?  I can't tell if it is simply my love of John Green or the brilliance of his stories that brought Looking for Alaska to the forefront of my mind.  My sister read this book as part of her middle school curriculum and was ultimately the reason I picked this book off my bookshelf a few years ago.  It's a story of self-discover by the main character and his interactions with a girl who seems to have herself all figured out.  It has strong male and female characters in it and I believe it could be a great piece of literature for all students to look at the question of who am I from both the character's perspective as well as their own.
     I wouldn't simply teach the novel though - I would supplement with a few poems and even a short story.  I found a few poems that would make for great introductions into this unit including "One" by James Berry also "Who You Are" by Jean Little could work well in the unit. 
     This unit would address writing standards - there would be quite a bit of reflection going on because of the nature of the material we would be covering as well as some reading standards.  Along with these a final project of sorts would focus on the media standards and including the use of technology when creating a project to express what they have learned.
     From here I will begin to pull together resources and get a better idea of the actual strategies I might want to implement as part of this unit plan.  I am very excited to begin work on this and will keep you updated!

Discussion - More Important the Older They Get

     This week in class we have been discussing the importance of Discussion.  I was shocked to hear the statics that say fewer than 1 in 40 middle school classrooms use discussion as a form of learning.  I was so surprised to hear this because when I think back to my middle school (and high school) experience my teachers often used this tool as an exchange of ideas.  I always preferred this method of teaching to simply being handed a worksheet where I was asked to summarize what I read.  Discussion forces students to look at the text in different ways.  No two students will glean the same information and reactions from the text. 
     There are of course some problems that arise in group discussions.  For an efficient and productive discussion all the participants have to have prepared and thought about the text beforehand.  Some ways to avoid unprepared students is to require an entry ticket - a paper or short paragraph about the reading showing that students were ready to discuss.  There also is the problem that some students do not like to talk in large groups.  Some ways to deal with this is to require student to participate in some form.  But also smaller group discussion can take the pressure off of these students.
     My ideal classroom environment would foster discussions in which all students were invited as well as eager to participate.   Students would form a circle and exchange their ideas about what the text was about, their feelings on the topics and what the reading meant to them.  I think that every student should have the opportunity to experience these types of discussion and look forward to trying this strategy in my future classroom.