Bentley+Spring+2009+Units

This page links to units created by English 4790 Students enrolled in Erinn Bentley's Spring 2009 class.
Kristen Althouse "The House on Mango Street: Creating Vignettes that Reflect our Lives" The book, “The House on Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros deals with many pressing issues that are relevant to students from many diverse backgrounds. In this unit, students will explore the issues found in the novel, and apply them to their own lives. Students will free-write about their daily lives and experiences, and will be prompted to focus their choices of topics to small events, issues or routines that they believe are representative of who they are. Students will then explore the genre of writing in short vignettes utilized by Cisneros and create their own vignettes that frame four of these small focus events.

Devin Anderson-Ruddon "Auditory Companion: Telling Stories with Music" This Unit offers an expansion of a 'Biographical Narrative' into a musical representation, working through multiple mediums. It allows for students to craft a sountrack to their writing, generating an auditory version of the same piece. Can you tell the same story without the use of words? Accompanying the project, students will learn about lyrical/musical structures, their applications to literature, and how to communicate through across many different avenues.

Mary-Cate Bono "Rewriting Stereotypes." Students will spend the unit focusing on the many different stereotypes found throughout our culture in books and movies.After the students and the teacher have gone over different types and varieties of stereotypes, they will then read the graphic novel, __The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian__ by Sherman Alexie. After the novel is finished students will discuss the different stereotypes found throughout the novel, and then re-write the scenes with the stereotypes along with the different parts of the novel that they did not like. 

Danielle Cavinder  "A Monster Screenplay." This assignment aims to make students comfortable in expressing their ideas through new genres. This novel __Monster__ is written entirely as a screenplay and would introduce the genre to students. The idea is that if they can become comfortable in writing new genres they will be much more comfortable in adapting to other assignments. The students will also be writing about an experience from their own life.


 

Katie Cwikla "Welcome to the Real World of Business" In this 4 week unit students will investigate careers that interest them, select a local business related to their career field, and will then be challenged to create an employability portfolio including a cover letter, a resume, and a thank you letter.  Betsey Dennis "Gangs Vs. Child Soldiers." This unit addresses the issues of gangs by viewing them in comparison to child soldiers using, //A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier//, and //Monster: An Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member//, as the main texts.

Annee Dunn "Get in the Know with the News" After studying books that show the great (and sometimes grave) outcomes of current events, (I recommend Satrapi’s, //The Complete Persepolis// and Art Spiegelman’s, //Maus I,// even Harper Lee’s, //To Kill a Mocking Bird//), students’ will be asked to synthesize current events by researching some at the school, state, national, and global levels of news. 

Hailey Fusco <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> "The Letter Home: A Unit on Vietnam" Students will be focusing on the Vietnam War as they read various literary works including a short story by Tim O’Brien and Bernard Edelman's collection of letters, //Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam//. After studying and reading different genres (poetry, short stories, personal narratives, memoirs, etc.) of Vietnam literacy and the students will connect literature to a personal story by creating a letter home to a loved one. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Stacey Hair "The Real Story of Romeo and Juliet"This lesson is intended for 9th and 10th grade students who are in a freshman or sophomore English class. The students will read Romeo and Juliet in class. Students will then be given the opportunity to be creative by writing an alternative story using Romeo and Juliet as a baseline for their story. Students will pick a character from the play to take on their role in a modern day story

Zuri Kelver "Protest Literature"For this unit students will work with written texts that deal with issues of animal and human rights, environmentalism and other issues. The two main texts of the unit, Jack London's __Call of the Wild__, and Martin Luther King's philosophical treatise __Strength to Love__ will be discussed in terms of how the authors use prose to speak out against certain injustices

Laura McDougal Letter Writing Through the reading of "The Things They Carried" Students will examine the real and symbolic burdens/weights we all carry in our lived through analysis of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

Dave Montgomery-Zott "Poetry- It's a Rap!" <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As it pertains to student growth and development, this lesson is designed to expand each learner’s cultural awareness, while teaching reading skills necessary to understand poetry. The unit will teach students a modern creative outlet, commonly practiced by members of urban communities. In a suburban setting, educators should not limit their resources to those left behind by the ‘Dead White Guys’. As America’s cultural landscape continues to expand, so too should the curriculum of our children’s classrooms.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Melissa Roberts <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The Persuasive Essay: Moving Beyond the 5-Paragraph Form" Students will explore the persuasive essay through a recursive writing process. They will use political cartoons and newspaper articles to familiarize themselves with taking a stance on various topics. They will also be read a passage from Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book, to borrow the poetic form for the outline of their persuasive essays on the topics of their choice. Students will also be permitted time to do Internet research on their topics, with which they will turn their poems into 5-paragraph essays. The essays will be revised, with the help of peer editing, and expanded past the 5-paragraph form to include more details and counter-arguments. This unit is ideal for students who have not had much practice with writing essays of those who have not gone past the 5-paragraph form. (Grades 9-10)

Elizabeth Schmuhl "Salinger and Screen Writing"Wes Anderson, a well-known director and producer, has used JD Salinger’s books to inspire many of the movies he has created. JD Salinger would not allow any of his writing to be turned into movies so Wes Anderson had to think of creative ways to use characters, situations, and themes present in JD Salinger’s books without getting into legal trouble. Prior to this assignment, students will have self-selected one of Salinger’s novels and form literature circle of 4-5 students around the text. In the same literature circle groups, students will create their own 5-10 minute screenplays.

Virginia Shedd **Novel Expertise** asks students in teacher-assigned groups to choose a book from a teacher-prepared list. Each group should read a different book and students should finish their books at approximately the same time, even as book lengths vary. Prompts may be used to guide reading. Students will benefit from group discussions that involve guided questioning from the teacher as they tackle the theme of oppression. Group discussion should become progressively autonomous. Each Friday students will be placed in “mixed book groups” (where each group member is reading a different book) and each student will give a synopsis of her book’s progress and students will discuss how each book deals with oppression. The unit will culminate in a 10-page paper (critical essay discussing symbolism, metaphor, a recurring theme or idea and how it relates to oppression, et cetera) involving print and Online research, as well as a final project that will mirror the paper topic but can be crafted in any way the student chooses.

Megan Werner <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Altering Style through Mulit-Genres" <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students will <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">l  <span style="font-size: 90%; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">earn about multi-genres and transform their literacy narrative into a multi-genre of choice. This unit allows students oppportunities to self-reflect, explore new and different possibilities, be creative, and explain the importance of grammar in their narrative and how it is used. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Matt Zobal<span style="font-size: 90%; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> "MultiGenre Writing" <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This Unit is designed to teach and explore new forms of writing for 11th and 12th graders. High school students spend their entire secondary education learning to write in the same forms and this is not always a good thing. If a student does really like writing and always writes in the same genres, what does that student do when he or she gets to college and is told to write in a new genre. In this unit, students will learn how to write in many different forms including songs, Poetic short stories, themed writing, and script writing.