Final Project: Website for Student Teaching Courses

For my final project, I chose to create a companion website for the courses I’ll be teaching at South High School in the spring. I thought this would be a great place for me to post digital copies of all of the assignments, homework, and rubrics as well as a place to post my contact information for parents, helpful websites for students, models of various projects and a place to post digital student work so they can share it with their classmates, friends and family.
My cooperating teacher does not use very much technology in her classroom, which is totally fine, I just thought this would be a great way to get students to think about school outside of school as well as a place to find documents if they misplace them or need extra help.
Students would not be required to use the website—I had a long discussion with my cooperating teacher about this and she thinks that given their age and the certain group I’ll be working with that requiring them to use the internet would give them more of an excuse to not do the work, than be a motivator. The website would therefore be a way to try to get students to keep the schedule on their minds and look for web links that would help them with certain projects and also a great way for parents to stay “in the know” in terms of what their students are doing.
I have posted two example assignments: the podcast for book clubs and the VideoANT project on The Crucible film. I think it is very important for students to have a model to look at while they are doing their projects and I think that if I am willing to do the work then they might be more inclined to do so themselves.
I also included a google calendar of important SHS dates and due dates for the major assignments in the course. This way students or parents can merge it with their own calendar if they want or they can just use it as a resource. I would likely add student activities like sporting events, choir or band concerts or other performances of students in my classes to encourage them to support each other outside of class.
On the “What to expect in H2” page, I have included Ms. Horswill’s (my cooperating teacher) syllabus as well as a PowerPoint that lays out the expectations for the course. Currently the ppt is based on Ms. H’s guidelines…this will likely be slightly changed as I further develop my plan for the spring semester.
I also added links to local libraries to encourage my students to read outside of class as well as for class!
I am very excited to use this website with my students in the spring as well as teach them how to create VideoANT, VoiceThread and podcast projects. It looks to be an exciting spring!
Here is a link to my site:
Ms. Rose and Humanities Too

Podcast Book Review: Absolutely, Positively Not by David LaRochelle

This podcast was created for Literature for Adolescents, fall 2009.

Integrating Media/Film into Curriculum

There are a number of excellent ways to integrate media into the language arts curriculum. A few films I might use would be:

• The film Clueless to be paired with Jane Austen's Emma
• The film 10 Things I Hate About You with Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew
• I have always thought that the 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet would be a great supplement to the classic, perhaps with selected scenes from Shakespeare in Love or the 1968 version. I might also show West Side Story to demonstrate the Shakespearean theme of forbidden love revisited.
• I would show clips of the film version of Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals to go along with his partly autobiographical novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
• If my students were learning about the Civil Rights Movement, I would definitely show Remember the Titans to go along with a text like Coming of Age in Mississippi
• While studying 1984 or Brave New World, I would definitely show at least clips of V for Vendetta and perhaps even clips from the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11
• Cast Away would be a great film to show while reading The Cay or Lord of the Flies
• I would love to find some reason to show It's a Wonderful Life and Iron Jawed Angels in my class as well. It's a Wonderful Life would be a good period film to introduce the era, while Ironed Jawed Angels would be a great introduction to women’s roles in the early 20^th century.
• I would love to use Comic Life, podcasts, and iMovies to give students the opportunity to do their own adaptations of various texts (particularly Shakespeare) and I would use VideoANT and VoiceThread when teaching students about media analysis whether it be of films, television shows or advertising.

Music Autobiography

This is a very challenging post for me to write because I really enjoy a variety of music, but I am not particularly knowledgeable about elements of music and what makes a certain genre. This is has been and remains to be a point of embarrassment in my life...but I will do my best to describe myself using music.

Bands/Artists I enjoy:
Jason Mraz (also with Bushwalla)
Lily Allen
Beyonce
Dan Wilson
Jack Johnson
Regina Spektor
India.Arie
M.I.A
Sia
Justin Timberlake
Julia Nunes
Citizen Cope
Cake
Ani DiFranco

Main things I look for in music:

• Lyrics: I like songs with a message, songs that make me think.
• Dance-ability: I like songs that I can dance to, but only if I'm in a dancing mood...
• Comical element:I really like songs with sarcastic or humorous lyrics. I think music is a great outlet for comedy.
• Creativity and originality: I enjoy original lyrics by the artists themselves, people whose creativity and willingness to take risks has gotten them where they are today.
• A story: I like soundtracks to musicals/broadway shows that tell a story through music.
  

Given my wide variety of interest in music, I had a really hard time picking one song. So, I have included two. "Free Life" by Dan Wilson and "It's Hard to be a Gangster" by Bushwalla & Jason Mraz.
"Free Life" demonstrates my love of lyrics and songs that make me think. I made a soundtrack/mix CD for a first year experience class I TA-ed in college and this was one of the songs that I included. The song is about how everyone is given a "free life" and it is up to them what they are going to do with it. I really like this song because although some might think it cheesy, I find it to be inspiring. It gives the listener ownership and makes them think about all of the possibilities that life brings.


"It's Hard to be a Gangster" demonstrates creativity, originality and comedy. Jason Mraz is one of my favorite artists and he has done a number of songs with his friend Bushwalla and this is one of their collaborations. It kind of makes fun of people who are trying to be something that they're not and it is done in a humorous way. This song makes me laugh every time I listen to it and to me, that is a sign of a good song!

Documentary in the Classroom

I would integrate documentary into my classroom by having students do a group project on a documentary of their choice (following a classroom discussion and viewing of a few sample documentaries). They would watch a documentary (one from a list of suggestions by the teacher to give them ideas) together as a group of 4-5 students and then respond to the documentary by creating their own. They would interview one another about their reaction to the film and ask them about validity, basis, theme, style, tone, etc. Having them do a documentary response of their own would be a great performance assessment.

Documentary Analysis: Straightlaced

For my documentary analysis, I attended the Minnesota premier of the documentary film, Straightlaced. Below is a preview of the film:

Purpose: The purpose of this film is to discuss “gender” as a social construction that affects everyone, but particularly developing teens. How do society and the media put pressure or relief on people based on their sex and supposed gender? What are teens worried about when it comes to gender? Do they feel safer inside of a box or out of it? How do teens define masculine and feminine? Do they feel there is a gender binary? The film aims to be extremely honest in its discussion of gender by truly allowing the issue and the people it affects to speak freely about it. The film also aims to demonstrate ways in which students feel pressured to conform to a certain “standard” of gender and that they are aware of this pressure and they are willing to talk about it.

Intended Audience: Anyone and everyone. Particularly those who work with young people and people who strongly believe in the gender binary, or those who don't!

Techniques Used: The entire film is composed of interviews with young people—high school students from across the country. There is very little direction and no interaction with the director on screen whatsoever. The technique used here is letting the images and voices speak for themselves. The students seemed to direct the flow of the film and what would be the emphasis. This honesty from them made this seem extremely genuine and open. Rather than a director or other adult speaking or summarizing the issue, the film is only interviews. The students are candid, honest and opinionated. The bias of the film seemed to be more liberal—allowing for a more spectrum-based definition of gender—but it was not particularly blatant, the students had their own opinions and each person was respectfully recognized for their opinion. The film felt extremely realistic—the students sound like others I have known—and they were willing to talk about themselves, which cannot easily be scripted.

Here is a link to the website for the organization that produced the film:

GroundSpark

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

The following is a VoiceThread I did as a companion to a review of Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House. This was completed as part of a Minnesota-based Native American project for EdHD 5005.