the Class overall

I really enjoyed this class this semester! I think that we had a lot of really beneficial conversations, and i feel a lot more comfortable about teaching literature in a classroom now. I think that i now have a good background about the various ways you can approach a book, and all the things i can do with a book, like guest speakers, field trips, etc. There is so much i didn't know about that is possible, while i was going through middle and high school. I hope that teachers are actually using these techniques in their classrooms, besides the ones we read about. I think some of the strong points of this class were the blogging. It made me want to pay more attention and not be so stressed about having to write a formal paper about the information we were learning about. That just adds a lot of added pressure that wasn't really needed because i feel like blogging gives just as much insight if we did the work or not. I also liked how our class focused on whole class discussion more than just lecturing. This also made me do the readings so i knew what to talk about, and when i did talk i didn't sound stupid or uninformed.
Something i would recommend fixing for the next semester would be to make more requirements for the chapter teaches. I felt that they were very redundant and when we had more in one day, it was pretty boring and i sometimes found myself not paying as close of attention. I would try to add some more creative ways to teach or discuss the chapters so each person isn't doing the same thing every time.
Other than that, i really enjoyed this class, and wish i could have you for 379!!

The Giver

I think that our teaching presentation went really well. I think that we were well prepared, and for only having six kids in the class, the discussions were fairly good. I really enjoyed our beginning activity, and i am glad that we were able to do a lot of things the other groups didn't do, especially since we were last to present. However, i think there are some things we could have done better. I think that it would have gone more smoothly if we had practiced the presentation a bit more. We felt that we should all be an equal part, and we didn't want one person to have to take control of any single activity, so we tried to all do a little part of each, even if it was just to ask questions. Speaking of questions, i think that we asked a lot of probing questions to the class, and made them think about the book. I also think that we could have had a lot more to talk about. I believe that we wanted more discussion about the banned book issue, which i was a little disappointed that we didn't get more discussion out of it. Overall i think we did a good job, and our group work really well together. I also like that we only had three group members, which made things easier, just a lot more work.

Violent Cases

I was interested to see what they were going to do with this book for two and half hours. I was surprisingly impressed though that you could do so much with the book and not make it extremely boring. I think this group did a really good job with all the different activities. I particularly liked the activity with drawing the comic in groups. I also thought it was a good idea of broadening the lesson into teaching comics, and graphic novels more than just the book. I think we did get off on a tangent though about memories, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was actually really interesting to listen to. I thought they were very planned out and had a good presentation. I had some reservations about the Marxist theory since it did change how i felt about the book. I still like the book, but i just don't think it was the best lens too look at the book through. We talked about this in class, but i think i would be one of those students, or teacher who might introduce the lens to give some students the ability to find things they might have missed, but i wouldn't focus on it, and i also think that i wouldn't outright say what we were doing. I think i would be a little more subtle about it. I liked the lesson though!

The Bell Jar

I thought that the Bell Jar teaching went well. It seemed like they did a lot of planning, and had everything worked out, so there were no kinks. I also liked the fact that they kept us engaged in everything. It was slow at some parts, but i think it had to be, while we were getting the background knowledge of Silvia Plath's life. It was needed to be able to better understand the book. However, the only thing that i am slightly confused about is what their objective was. I know it was to analyze the book, but i thought it had to be more precise. This could just be my misunderstanding though. Other than that, i liked how they used different activites, like the visuals, the youtube, and everything else. It was entertaining, and informational. i felt like i learned a lot that i didn't realize about the book while reading it. I think they did a good job, and should be proud of it!

Literature and Lives Ch. 7

I think that this chapter is a good one, but i am not too sure how i feel about it being the last chapter before the conclusion. I think that this chapter would do better after one of the first ones when Webb brought in the speaker. I only feel that way because I feel that a testimonial is the second best thing to getting a real life speaker in your classroom. i would love to use testimonials and or autoenthnographies in my classroom. I also think that they would work really well in a history classroom if the testimonial is by someone who dealt with a historical marker. They give such insight to specific things, just like a speaker would, however this way you can read it over and over again instead of only hearing it once. I also think that these forms of literature can give a very different, and more varied way to think about a specific topic. I didn't really like reading this chapter overall, but I do like the ideas it proposes.

Response to Literature and Lives

This book was the most enjoyable to read, and i also found it to be the most informative and beneficial to a future teacher. I really enjoyed how Webb connected a lot of what he was talking about to things that really happened in his life, and gave a lot of background as to why he was teaching the things he was passionate about. That is another thing. Webb seemed so passionate about his teaching, and you could feel his emotions as you read. You would feel troubled when he did, nervous when he did, and proud when he did. It really got you hooked into the book. I also liked how Webb gave a little description of each literary theory in the chapter it was talked about. This helped to give the reader some background information to what the theory was, and they could easily find it when reading about it. This book seemed much more intimate than the others, and i think that helps soon to be teachers because they see the not pretty side of teaching. They see that not everything works out how you thought, and sometimes things have to be adjusted on the fly. Another huge asset that this book has to new teachers, and old teachers is the lists of suggested texts, etc. at the end of each chapter that can help relate to that topic and other such topics.

Reaction to Criticial Encounters

I also enjoyed reading this book as well. I thought it was a good insight into the different theories and criticisms and how to go about teaching them in the classroom. I think the most beneficial part to this book is the lessons we read about by specific teachers and how they worked or didn't work, and also the appendixes in the back of the book with different activities. I also think this book would be completely different if it didn't include the conclusion, or the conclusion was different, as i have said before. Connecting all this stuff to the real world i think is a huge help to students, especially those that struggle with looking at something through a specific lens. Out of the three books, however, i liked this one the least. It just seemed a little repetitive, but also vital to have to read as a going to be teacher. I think Appleman could have done without A LOT of the responses that students gave to things and still would have gotten the same point across. But, i am not saying that i didn't like this book. I found it informative and useful for my future career. I just didn't enjoy reading it, like i did the others.