Engl 493 Teaching Literature to Adolescents

For my book talks, I feel like I did good. Full disclosure, I choose books I have already read before, but I also do wish I had chosen books you haven't heard of before. Regardless , I think I did well in giving my thoughts on the book and how I would teach it. I think I could have gone more in-depth with the teaching ideas section of the assignment. That would be my only critique. But I really enjoyed listening to other book talks. I look forward to reading some books I haven't heard of and maybe have the opportunity to teach them in my classroom. For my unit plan, I feel like it still needs work to be a solid unit plan. I think the lessons still need work in order to make them more engaging for students. My problem was figuring out how. I think I just need more practice and confidence in writing my ideas down for unit plans. Of course, this is something that I will definitely be working on as I continue my studies. Through our readings and discussions, I found one of...

For this post I read a few poems by Edgar Allen Poe including one short story named "The Oval Portrait." I don't think that Poe's short stories would be good short stories to share in secondary education. I personally find his work not that interesting. I'm not into stories that are horror related. I'm sure there will be plenty of students who will love horror, but I'm not passionate about it. And I think if I'm not passionate about it, then I shouldn't teach it. I would defiantly recommend it to a few students who like horror and want to get into short story horror from the 1800's. But, yeah, I do find it useful to have students read and figure out what Poe was meaning or to try and figure out another meaning. But as I said before, if I'm not passionate about his work how can I expect students to be passionate. I think there are plenty of other short stories and mediums to use to teach that can be good for me to teach as well as students w...

I read this book when I was in high school. When I read this book in high school, I liked it because the story was intriguing. It was just interesting for me to read about the experience of someone going through those camps. This was the only reason I kept reading. The length of the book also made it less daunting to read. I just remember that this book taught me how the holocaust was like. It was my first introduction to the history of the holocaust, and I was just intrigued. When I reread this novel this time around I was better able to understand and see the horror of the holocaust. I had a clearer picture of what was going on. So of course I still liked the book. It's an interesting view of what he encountered there. The way he lost his innocence at a young age and the way he was seeing his family get sick in the camp made me think about how real and horrific the holocaust really was compared to back in high school. In high school, all of those events were just ideas to me. B...

Into the Wild is a non-fiction book based on an American hiker named Christopher McCandless. He hiked in Alaska. He was later found in an abandon bus. I believe that McCandless left to find enlightenment in his life. This book does go into themes of transcendentalism which I think would be very interesting for high school students. Also there is this theme of wanting to revolutionize your life and put yourself in a position to learn and experience new things. In the book, the man who goes hiking around Alaska just goes by Alex. He leaves his whole life behind. He donated his  savings, burned the rest of his money, and didn't tell anyone from his family where he was going. I could defiantly see this book being taught with 10th graders or 11th graders. This book has the adventure aspect to it. It's a whole documentation of his travels in Alaska and possible ways he died. It gives some history on the area to give a picture of how the environment developed and affected Alex. I th...