I started this post months ago but shelved it for awhile. I am posting it now because the work my students did last semester is relevant to what they're currently working on. Enjoy!
I've been spending the majority of this semester teaching my 9th graders about text types. One my professors at CSUN, Kathleen Rowlands @KathleeRowlands, in her Issues in Reading course suggested that if students know what to expect when approaching a certain text type: poem, letter, essay, etc. that students can notice when the author plays with the form as well as where to look for shifts in the narrative. Dr. Rowlands gave us this poetry example. You take the text and make all the letters X's (it takes awhile, but it's worth it). One Art BY ELIZABETH BISHOP The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. When the entire text is a single letter, students are looking at the formatting of the text and not trying to figure out what it means. Where are the shifts? What makes you think that? Since I started teaching text structures, it has made reading materials more accessible to students. It takes time at the beginning of the school year to teach these but as Jon Corippo (@jcorippo) says, "If it's difficult, we need to start the first day."
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMy name is Sarah Todd and I teach freshmen and junior English in Southern California. Archives
August 2018
Categories |