As Charlotte articulates in
Charlotte’s Web
, people maintain an astonishing level of trust in what they read. One of the most important skills in life is to be able to evaluate the truthfulness of voice, whether in a text, online, or face-to-face. We all do this constantly in our everyday lives when we read the news, meet a new person, or shop for a car. We are incessantly determining whether the source of information we encounter is trustworthy. In the digital era, this issue has become increasingly complicated for students, who have only known life in which information is shared more quickly and freely then ever before. With more information continuously available at our fingertips, the skill of discernment becomes even more necessary.
The goal of this curricular unit is to address this skill of evaluating the truthfulness and reliability in voice-in both traditional texts and contemporary digital narratives. Whether through crafted objectivity, reliable commentary, or vivid realism, the reader of a text is persuaded to accept the narrative. Certain qualities of voice, such as direct comments by the narrator or an impersonal narration, can undermine this meticulously constructed plausibility (Booth 346). Booth argues in
The Rhetoric of Fiction
, “most seeming facts carry, in fiction, a heavy load of evaluation” (177). In this unit, the narrative voice is the focus point in the critical analysis of the author’s craft. Students must be able to determine whether the voice of a text, fiction or non-fiction, has a convincing and realistic texture.
This three-week unit is specifically designed for tenth grade students in a high school special education resource room. Through the novel
Monster
by Walter Dean Myers, other readings, activities, discussions, and writing, students will develop critical reading skills, and will analyze and evaluate the reliability of the narrator or voice of various texts. The unit will explore issues of reliability of the narrative voice and characteristics of different genres, as well as real-world and digital narratives.
There are 10 tenth grade students in my current classroom, with disabilities including specific learning disabilities, organization/attention deficits, speech/language disorders, and hearing impairment. These disabilities manifest themselves in different ways on the individual level. Several of my students have auditory processing deficits, making comprehension of instruction difficult. Their reading levels are all below grade level, ranging from a third grade level to a seventh grade level. Some are just beginning to feel comfortable participating in class discussion, while others can hardly stop talking to sit still. Many of them also have working memory issues, which necessitate repetition of instruction and a slow pace. As a result of their disabilities, many of my students have difficulty engaging fully with much of the written text that is presented in their coursework.
The resource room is established as a separate class, which my students have once daily. While students are given some time to complete assignments from other classes, the essential purpose of the class is to function as academic support for the students’ specific needs, rather than as a study hall. That said, there are regular occasions when I work with students individually or in small groups to clarify assignments or review a recently taught skill. Central to all of my work is facilitating student success in the regular curriculum and their growth overall as students.
This unit is designed in accordance with the function of the resource room to support student work in regular education coursework, as well as to target specific needed areas. Within that goal, the unit I am designing will integrate directly with the English curriculum. While the unit will build on my students’ observed need for critical reading and evaluation skills, it is also designed to scaffold the regular education unit on the novel
Monster
by Walter Dean Myers. Using multiple texts and incorporating the use of the novel,
Monster,
from the general curriculum, this unit will directly support my students’ educational needs.
