Redkudu

Your use of the stories to practice speaking in class is a great idea. It's too bad you don't get more time for this unit - some of the Native American speeches would be great for this as well. Thanks for the clarification of your assessment. It helped with some ideas I've been working on for my English II Antigone unit. You know that I have this Native American unit all planned out so if I can help with anything (my handouts, etc.) let me know. (I have one ready for the Bradstreet poem that has questions in the margins to be answered after reading that prompt annotation and analysis if you want to look at it. I think I told you about it - you fold it in half to read, then open it back up to analyze.) I love this literature. For a very brief time I studied Anthropology in college, so the myths and folklore are near and dear to my heart.

I know what you mean about choosing what elements to teach. I have the same problem, and struggled with it. I've decided to do something like your Plan 2. I look over the works I'm going to teach in the unit, and find those elements that are most strongly represented. Then I prepare my exams and skills tests with the tasks I know I want the students to be able to successfully achieve. I always use an unfamiliar piece for assessment - they should be able to take what they've learned and apply it to anything, I believe. Then I work backward, looking at the pieces I'll use in my teaching, and finding places where I can emphasize the elements.

I had also thought about something like your Plan 1, teaching everything with each unit, but after careful consideration decided that doesn't really seem to allow for good, specific practice, and seems to put too much on the student's plate all at once. For myself, I decided I want to build up. I'm hoping that will facilitate retention.

Now I'm up to planning for Gatsby, and I'm stuck. One of the things that's always hardest for me is continuation. I can get the novel started, but always feel it begins to lag, and I haven't yet come up with a good activity that spans the length of the novel. That's why I'm considering the mini-research I mentioned. I'll be teaching Gatsby just before the winter holidays, so I won't be able to do anything too extensive, but I thought the mini-research could facilitate discussion of some of the themes in the book, and prepare the students for a larger research project in the spring.

What do you do with novels? How do you keep the kids/the lesson from lapsing in the middle?