Re-Reading Harry Potter

With less than a month away from the premiere of the new Harry Potter, my roommate, girlfriend and I are all starting to re-read the series. With so many books I feel like it's going to be quite a task. The books are rather long and will require me to be dedicated in my reading. However, doing this will only help me when it comes to teaching. We are in positions where many of our students are unfamiliar with this literary "canon" that we are expected to be experts on. Yet, I personally think that these are some of the books we should be brushing up on. Many of our students will find this sort of reading to be more enjoyable. Although the school may require us to teach Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby, The Chocolate War etc., these books are ones we can use to fill in for those students who need a suggestion of a book to pleasure read. I also know that for instance at my school my cooperating teacher has told me she was able to choose a young adult literature book at her own discretion for her Junior level class. Back to my topic. Harry Potter is set in a world of fantasy. Wizards, witches, werewolves, trolls etc. These books really open up the imagination of the reader. Obviously everything is fictional, and half of the enjoyment is how you view it in your mind. We talk about everyday in class ways in which we can really reach our students. We have given examples of successes that we have had thus far in our teaching. For the most part, I haven't heard us talk about many books we are teaching in the classes.

I think of last year when we were in Dr. Pytash's class and she gave us the opportunity to choose a young adult book to read and do multiple assignments that went along with it. Honestly, this was my favorite thing I have ever done in a college classroom. I enjoyed it for several reasons. Dr. Pytash introduced this activity to us in a way that was as inviting as possible. She did research on all of the books we were able to choose. She told us the categories in which they fit into which allowed us to narrow our decision. Once we had dones so, we chose the books, read them, presented them, wrote papers on them. Now, obviously there were much more details than that, but what I truly loved was the ability of choosing something ourselves. I really got excited about what we were doing and I got excited about sharing my book with everyone. I ended up going on to read the next two books in the series and The Hunger Games has become my favorite trilogy. Below is a PDF file about some research done on young adult literature. Not only has it been incorporated into English classrooms, but into others as well. This research is trying to show that young adult literature can benefit students in all areas, and all subjects that schools offer. I enjoyed reading it, and found it to be very interesting and informative.

http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/literacy/young.pdf

Chapter 4 Writer's Workshop

I actually used this chapter in my ten day unit plan. My unit was on Characters. I had to do anything and everything that included characters and how they apply to reading, writing and English in general. I started off my unit by actually reading the first paragraph of the chapter. My students looked at me perplexed. Yet, I got their attention. My absolute favorite line in this entire chapter is located in that first paragraph: "Now don't misunderstand: By "action" I do not mean merely street fights, car chases, and passionate love scenes. By "action," I mean any thought, word, or deed that engages your character with some other character, and thereby becomes an event." I think that is such a good statement for a couple of reasons. My final assessment for my students was them composing a very short, two-page narrative. When I told them that I wanted them to develop their characters, they all become flustered and clearly anxious about the assignment. After reading this to them again they started to settle down. I remember Dr. Kist reading this to us in class one day and I knew that I would be using it to help my unit.

I think it's a great chapter with all the in-depth looks we see for characters. Koch talks about the point of views, roles of characters, voice, dialogue etc. When I am writing a story I never really think about the depth that my characters can have. I have the power to develop them into such dynamic people. With this chapter I did a lot of activities with my students. We did activities that allowed them to develop characters that didn't even pertain to what they were writing for their narratives. I talked to them about the ability to really get into developing their characters. Like our activity in class where we acted out skits with random stuffed animals. I did something very similar to this in my classroom as well. My students loved it and afterward I allowed time to begin writing and I think that really helped them open up their creative minds and get going on their writing.

When I wrote my own narrative for my students, I modeled characters from my life that were real. I developed them in ways that I only could have. Nobody else knew what had happened in my story. I had all the power. I think that really was my overall message for my unit. I challenged my students to be creative, use the pencil as a weapon when writing. "Give me more, more details, more dialogue, more actions, more adventures, more characteristics, when in doubt, write more." This was my "lecture" at the end of the day before their paper was due. Below is a funny clip from Family Guy. I chose this because we see the dynamic development of Meg, Brian and Stewie within a short two minutes. Little things like dialogue, scenario and body language tell a lot about characters. Although this is a video, you can see how this being written would give a great indication of who these characters really are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lich59xsjik