Data analysis and interpretation
August/September
Near the beginning of the school year, in Unit 1, my partner teacher and I introduced the concept of dystopias with our students. The focus of this unit was the foundations of our United States government—the role of government, the influences on our government, and discussion of different types of government that exist throughout the world. My partner teacher and I searched for literature that would appeal to students in order to integrate both language arts and Government curriculum. We found a lot of young adult literature about dystopian societies. We asked what students thought about dystopian stories, and they were quick to share their thinking on some of the best dystopian novels they had read. We set out to help our students better understand themes and types of governments in dystopian worlds.
One of the classic pieces of literature given to ninth grade Civic Studies students year after year is Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. When I was reading the short story in preparation of sharing it with my students, I sensed that this story seemed extremely difficult to understand. My initial reaction was to transform the story into a play format. I divided the script into 15 narrator roles and then turned the storytelling dialogue format into a play dialogue format in which the characters, my students reading the roles, talked back and forth to one another. I figured instead of having students sit at their desks and read a complex short story silently and independently, we would get up as a class to read and “act” it out as a whole group in an effort to make more sense of the text. I was unsure how my students would respond to this kind of activity. On September 3, I wrote in my inquiry journal:
. . .when I told my students I turned The Lottery into a play and we were going to read it out loud as a class they were pumped. They couldn’t believe I had turned a reading into a play. We saw students who would not typically volunteer, volunteer to read character parts. It was clear from their engagement in the reading (through visceral reactions to events as they were unfolding, such as the audible sighs, and ‘WHAT?!’ reactions to the ending of the story) students were trying to wrap their heads around the world of this story. They were critically thinking about why this story was written, the purpose of the lottery within the context of the story itself, and the larger themes emerging from the story.
My partner teacher and I sensed we had done something right, and were curious to try more strategies like this one.
Near the beginning of the school year, in Unit 1, my partner teacher and I introduced the concept of dystopias with our students. The focus of this unit was the foundations of our United States government—the role of government, the influences on our government, and discussion of different types of government that exist throughout the world. My partner teacher and I searched for literature that would appeal to students in order to integrate both language arts and Government curriculum. We found a lot of young adult literature about dystopian societies. We asked what students thought about dystopian stories, and they were quick to share their thinking on some of the best dystopian novels they had read. We set out to help our students better understand themes and types of governments in dystopian worlds.
One of the classic pieces of literature given to ninth grade Civic Studies students year after year is Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. When I was reading the short story in preparation of sharing it with my students, I sensed that this story seemed extremely difficult to understand. My initial reaction was to transform the story into a play format. I divided the script into 15 narrator roles and then turned the storytelling dialogue format into a play dialogue format in which the characters, my students reading the roles, talked back and forth to one another. I figured instead of having students sit at their desks and read a complex short story silently and independently, we would get up as a class to read and “act” it out as a whole group in an effort to make more sense of the text. I was unsure how my students would respond to this kind of activity. On September 3, I wrote in my inquiry journal:
. . .when I told my students I turned The Lottery into a play and we were going to read it out loud as a class they were pumped. They couldn’t believe I had turned a reading into a play. We saw students who would not typically volunteer, volunteer to read character parts. It was clear from their engagement in the reading (through visceral reactions to events as they were unfolding, such as the audible sighs, and ‘WHAT?!’ reactions to the ending of the story) students were trying to wrap their heads around the world of this story. They were critically thinking about why this story was written, the purpose of the lottery within the context of the story itself, and the larger themes emerging from the story.
My partner teacher and I sensed we had done something right, and were curious to try more strategies like this one.
As we progressed through the rest of first semester, my partner teacher and I passionately continued trying new techniques and strategies to engage as many learning styles of our students as possible. The strategies that we found worked well consistently for the students (that is, the strategies the students more positively and effectively responded to) were those focused on an infusion of arts education. Three key moments stood out during the remainder of the first semester in which my partner teacher and I used arts education strategies to deepen our students’ learning.
October/November/December
January/February/March