Graphic Novel/Comics Unit

After reading the comic book Bone I had a whole new take on comic books. I never really understood how to read and understand a comic book until I read this one. Comic books really make you use your imagination and constantly keeps you guessing what’s going to happen next. This is important for children because if they are not interested in what they are reading then they can become bored and not enjoy reading. I think that having children read comic books is a great idea because not every student might be interested in reading, and this is a good way to make sure that all the students are enjoying reading. Sometimes its hard to get children to read because they think they have to read, but if you give them a fun book like a comic that sparks their interest they might continue to read. Comics are very creative and imaginative and part of reading requires that you are able to use your imagination so it is important to make sure you have creative books and comics to make sure the children are learning and not bored in class. Some cool lesson plan ideas could be to have students make their own comics and share them with the class.

These are some websites that are about comics.
http://comicsintheclassroom.net/2008/reviews/bone.htm
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/index.html
http://www.noflyingnotights.com/sidekicks/core.html

Shakespeare and Poetry Units

The Shakespeare unit was interesting I was never really able to understand Shakespeare until reading it and performing it in class with our groups. After doing the group Shakespeare acts I definitely had a better understanding of it after acting it out, and seeing every other group act it out. I also liked the watching the film on the Hobart Shakespeare Documentary. It gave me a lot of good ideas of how to get the students involved with also understanding Shakespeare by acting it out in a play with their class. There are lots of fun and creative ways that you can use to help students understand the material. These are some good websites to remember for ideas about Shakespeare.
http://www.rsc.org.uk/exploringshakespeare/
http://www.fireflybooks.com/Shakespeare.html

The poetry unit was fun because I really learned a lot of new ways that you can approach poetry that’s less intimidating to teaching it to students. Like an example from Koch’s book on how to teach poetry by having the class work together in making poems so students can feel more involved. Also its important to have students start off poetry but not using rhymes because some students are at more advanced levels than others and it’s a way to not exclude anyone, and some students can write better poetry when they don’t have constraints on what they have to write or write about. Its important to let students be creative when writing poetry and learning. There are lots of neat and creative lesson plan ideas you can use with poetry, for example you could have the students write about their favorite animal, favorite Holiday, favorite color, favorite food, and whatever other ideas they might have. You could also have a themed week of poetry to get the students more involved in the unit that way. These are some good websites about poetry.
http://home.att.net/~teaching/langarts/poetry.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june00/poetryboxrules.html
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/elements.html
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/poeform.htm