Learning Letter

Literature Presentation

Blog Post #7

In this section of reading, I enjoyed the section on poetry; I forgot that cinquain poems existed since second grade which is interesting. I also still do not know what iambic pentameter is though it did mention it and I have absolutely no idea how to define it. How can one find iambic pentameter? I think its about the emphasis one puts on a syllable but that was one thing I really didn't understand from poetry. Also, the section on analyzing fiction is not helpful because the kind you do in middle school and early high school is entirely different than what you do in AP or in college; I genuinely had no idea how to correctly interpret fiction in any kind of helpful analysis until my junior year of college. Also I just read that a German guy wrote Siddhartha which I find frustrating; it only adds to the point that the canon is stupid because its determined by white men for white men honestly---how can this guy accurately depict that story?
In total opposition to this, there is also a section about the different periods of writing which is only something I have specifically encountered in college but also Dana said it was on the NES test and it was the one thing she didn't know so I am glad it is in here.
I also liked the section about the legends (otherwise known as American Folktale) which is something we spent nearly all of fourth grade reading on and had to write our own "tall tales".
Also there is a section about The Crucible which is one of my favorite things we ever read in school because it is honestly so silly but so insanely relevant both in politics, "cancel culture", and in relationships youth have growing up and the innate scheme of popularity and the claims people can make when they have power.

Yin and Yang in the English Classroom: Teaching with Popular Culture Texts

Blog Post #6

This NES chapter was really plain. While it did tell us about all different aspects of writing, I didn't feel like I had not been shared this information before. It also did not say anything about application. While this is the first class I've had in college to actually address being a future educator, I feel like these are just simple sections a teacher may copy and paste onto a sheet and hand to their student.

In fact, the section about complex versus compound sentences seems verbatim to what I learned in freshman year of high school (albeit slightly less confusing). We spent weeks writing papers and identifying "DC, DCIC" and other variations thereof (otherwise known as dependent clause, dependent clause independent clause).

Also, on page 97, I found it to be completely unhelpful when in 9.5, it says "A good piece of writing..." all the way to the end. Not only does it start off completely subjectively, it also says to explicitly not address the prompt directly. I find that bad advice. A student often needs to readdress the prompt in the thesis to make it clear; how can one do so without paraphrasing? At this point in our English careers we get much more vague prompts to fulfill, but middle school students are not comparing Confucianism and Hinduism in Ramayana; instead, they are writing papers on "Great Americans" or current cultural events--without restating the prompt, a teacher might lose complete track of what they are grading.

This entire book does not address grade level expectations. Though available on many common core websites and state education websites, how could I know to address misplaced and dangling phrases differently with 12 year olds compared to 18 year olds. There are such differences between these groups and I find the lack of organization difficult.

The Graphic Canon Vol. 3 Handout 10/27/19

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Blog Post #5

This week's blog post is about visual literacy; I think its funny that what information we are responding to has not been presented as visual literacy, but in the form of the text and a website with text. I found that the book's instruction on creation of visual literacy was interesting--while we have been talking about graphic novels, this book instructs on the different aspects of powerpoint making a student could do or the drawbacks and advantages of videos. The latter I found very frustrating; while it does make a point that videos are very passive activities as they include multiple senses, it only briefly notes that non-readers would have a high advantage for it. Also, I'm not sure they should have included it without having a way to make them more passive. While many teachers require notes during movies, students still find a way to do it minimally. For example, we often had assignments that just asked questions line for line from the movie and you had to do them, but instead of paying attention we either listen for the answers or copy from someone later or look it up. But if teachers make them out of order, as in, not in the chronological order of the movie, they become almost impossible because you spend the whole time looking through the questions trying to figure out what you've missed rather than paying attention. And if there are no notes required, well, that is something that can cause a massive problem depending on the group of kids. Whereas in my German class (which had four girls in it--one junior and three seniors) we would watch movies every other Friday in German and just have fun with it, an over packed classroom of forty kids in the dark getting up to god knows what could be detrimental to multiple people in many ways. What can we do to encourage video usage while encouraging active participation?