If you believe in culturally-relevant teaching, or if you teach language arts and/or US history at the middle or high school levels, I cannot recommend the Teaching Mockingbird workshop enough. I first heard about Facing History and Ourselves through several coworkers who highly recommended their professional development opportunities including "Choices in Little Rock", "Teaching the Holocaust through Literature", "Holocaust and Human Behavior", and "Reconstruction and the Fragility of Democracy". Facing History has a strong social justice focus in dealing with content literacy, literature, and historical pedagogy.
I read To Kill A Mockingbird in eighth grade. I remember being overwhelmed by it. I had trouble navigating all of its complex layers, and I recently had trouble with a fundamental question- how would I successfully teach this book to my students by providing sufficient historical context and background knowledge, integrating the Common Core standards, utilize the gradual release of responsibility model, creating a unit using backwards design with an emphasis on performance tasks, and reaching a wide range of abilities, including a large population of English Language Learners?
These are all difficult questions to answer, but let's start one at a time.
How can we provide students with sufficient background knowledge to understand the historical context of the novel?
This was the most daunting task to me. The life of Jim Crow South was so insane it is unbelievable at times. This incredible article helps argue what several scholars had previously asserted; the Great Migration less about African Americans looking for more economic opportunities and more so from fleeing domestic terrorism. This documentary on Emmett Till was shocking to my students, and helped provide a view into the insane world that many African Americans dealt with with on a daily basis. There are lots of short stories, most notably James Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man", which I did not share with my students for a number of reasons, but provides a horrifying and graphic perspective on lynchings. There are a myriad of resources on teaching this period in history.
Finally I would urge teachers to be extremely pragmatic with comparing these historical events with other acts of genocide and terrorism. This is an easy trap that many educators can fall into and it is important not to homogenize historical tragedies.
How do we effectively teach the novel with the Common Core State Standards?
I originally stated the question as How do we effectively integrate the novel with the Common Core Standards, but this is contradictory to the Understanding by Design (UbD) model. We should begin with focusing on what standards we are focusing on, embedding enduring understandings and essential questions, followed by our summative assessment, and concluding with our daily learning activities.
Too often, educators see "essential questions" as simply another aspect of the UbD template that does not pertain significantly to what they are actually teaching in the classroom. I have been guilty of this myself. I would post them in the front of the room underneath my objectives, but not refer to them with my students, or even consciously think about them throughout my assessments and daily activities. One of the main essential questions for the Teaching Mockingbird unit is discusses how our events influence our moral growth and development. Creating a performance task based on a question such as this could take the form of a Socratic seminar, an essay evaluating the moral growth of Scout, a report analyzing race relations in Maycomb, or any appropriate assessment tied to your essential questions and enduring understandings.
Finally, I would strongly recommend that educators teaching this complex novel have clearly established Do Nows and Exit Slips, in addition to frequent checks for understanding. Cold-calling, dipsticking, and other formal and informal methods of assessments. Here are some examples that I have created based on CCSS question stems that could be used for Do Nows or Exit Slips based on "Firsthand Accounts of the Great Depression" from the Teaching Mockingbird unit:
1) Which of the following sentences best states an important claim about the central idea in Virginia Durr’s section of “Firsthand Accounts of the Great Depressions”? (Give evidence to support your answer): A) “God was punishing them.” B) “It was the first time I had seen the other side of the tracks.” C) “Have you ever seen a child with rickets?" D)“And people blamed themselves, not the system.”
2) What does the word “insane” in the second paragraph suggest about Durr’s feelings about the events of the Great Depression?
3) What is the effect of the of Durr’s contrast of the terms “dependent” and “independent” in the fourth paragraph? Why does she use these terms and how does it illustrate how people’s mindsets changed during the Depression?
4)What is the effect of the Barth’s repetition of the words “humiliated” and “humiliation” throughout the paragraph? What mood does the speaker create with these words?
5)What tone is created by the phrase, “I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too…”? Explain how you know.
6) Based on textual evidence, explain which one of the following statements is a fact and not an opinion or inference: A) The man she saw was humiliated. B) The man she saw was very proud. C) The author looked into the man’s closet. D)The man eventually got another railroad job.
How do we utilize the Gradual release of responsibility for an effective unit?
Better Learning Through Structured Teaching and the various works by Fisher and Frey have received a lot of attention over the past few years, and deservedly so. If you are not familiar with the concept, it is also commonly referred to as "I do/We do/You do"- modeling, guided practice, independent practice. Recently it has been clarified that You Do is actually two part- first practicing the skill or strategy in a group, followed by independent practice.
I love the guided release method and try to use it in all my teaching, but to be clear, there is one significant misconception; instruction does not always follow the I/We/You sequence.
When I first started teaching, I only taught science, and I was not sure how this model would apply in a science classroom. For example, if students were doing an experiment, do I model how it is completed first? Do "we" do part of the procedure together? Do they ("you") complete the experiment without returning to guided practice? Is the "you" aspect in the form of analysis questions, and then does the process start all over for the teacher to model responding to text-dependent questions?
Essentially, I/We/You is not always going to flow, especially depending on your lesson plan. For example, in your unit for To Kill A Mockingbird, you might begin with a Do Now based on the previous reading. Consider the following:
"During yesterday's class we created individual Universe of Obligations. If you were to create a Universe of Obligation for Scout, which characters would be placed in which levels? Consider how Scout responds to Walter Cunningham's table manners, as well as Calpurnia and Atticus' reaction to her response. Cite textual evidence from Chapter 4 in your claim."
This is the You Do, where students are responding independently. After five minutes, you might cold call responses and have them work together to come up with a class answer together, We Do. After reviewing your objective, you might model the skill you are teaching (I Do), such as classifying examples of figurative language found in the text. You might then complete guided practice with students for determining examples of paradoxes and oxymorons (We Do), then have students complete problems with their groups, and then independently (You Do). To summarize, introducing and reinforcing skills and strategies using these methods is often nonlinear.
How do we differentiate instruction to teach this complex text?
Differentiated instruction is paramount to a successful classroom. But how exactly does it look, especially when teaching a book as complex as To Kill A Mockingbird? This alone could be a whole book (and there have been numerous books on the subject), so I'll summarize it with a few brief tips:
1. "Assessment, Analysis, Action". This phrase comes out of the controversial Driven by Data, but it is nonetheless a good model. First, assess where your students are at through informal and formal assessments. If your school has a form of standardized testing (such as MAP in CPS), use that data to create RIT bands for different instructional levels. You can also use Do Nows, Exit Slips, or any assessments you use, informal included. Cold calling students to check for comprehension is a great method as well.
For example, look at what your students scored on a particular "strand", such as Literature- Craft and Structure, for some of the more challenging elements in To Kill A Mockingbird. Ask yourself questions; can they identify tone, are they able to analyze figurative language, and do they understand plot and elements of literature? After you analyze your student's progress, take "action", by creating or incorporating differentiated activities for groups of students.
2. Create activities with various Gardnerian learning styles. Consider your students- are they kinesthetic, tactile, auditory, or visual learners? The Facing History web site offers great audio records of firsthand accounts of the Great Depression, as well as some brief documentaries on lynchings and life in Jim Crow South. Students could also create a "found poem" with Post-Its based on their reaction to specific passages. They could create skits based on specific scenes and imagining what certain characters might say. (The scene when Atticus leaves the courtroom and Maycomb's black citizens remain and stand up as he leaves would be a great example.)
3. Differentiate for talented and gifted, students with learning disabilities, as well we English Language Learners (ELLs). I have mainly worked with ELLs, and I recommend techniques based on code-switching and contrastive analysis. Vocabulary instruction is also crucial here. Teaching Greek and Latin roots is extremely helpful for all students, but especially for struggling readers, because that knowledge can give them the tools to infer new words that they encounter in complex texts.
These are a few tips for teaching this incredible book. There have been many resources written on this subject, and again, I cannot recommend the Teaching Mockingbird unit enough. I hope these tips are helpful. Please feel free to comment with your own suggestions and teaching experience. Let your inner Scout come out- take action, be hands-on, and create the best classroom possible for teaching this incredible novel.
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