The unit starts with the students reflecting and responding to one of these essential questions: What is love? What is your definition of love? I expect them to come up with the usual answer that love is a special feeling between two individuals. They might also write about personal experiences or whatever they think love is. I give my students five minutes for this initial activity, and then I add a second question: How do you know it is love? This question requires them to use their prior knowledge to identify one example of love, analyze it, and draw a conclusion. They have another eight minutes before sharing their writings aloud. At this point, I ask them to write a few lines explaining how, after listening to the peers, they have changed or have a different perspective on love. We share our reflections again, and we discuss them in order to determine which aspect of this definition, if any, is the most important and why it is so relevant to them. I also ask them to use their experience and write a detailed description of an example of love. Of course, this pre-reading activity taps into their prior knowledge and leads them to reflect, synthesize and evaluate their views on their reality while understanding how to think abstractly. They are also in Vygosky's zone of proximal development because they can respond to the essential questions by referring to their personal lives, but they need the teacher's guidance to become more analytical and reflective in their reading and writing activities.
After this initial activity, I ask the students to research visual documents representing love. In doing this activity, each student researches an image of love that involves his or her specific artistic talent. This means the dancer has to find images in which love is expressed through dance; similarly, the drawing student looks for paintings or sculptures that represent love. The students in the Honors and Advanced Placements class do the same initial research, but they have to find today's images, advertisements or video clips as well as image from past centuries, and written texts to compare and contrast. All the visual documents are studied following a well-determined structure. Our first activity is to learn analyzing a visual image by looking at it, making sense, and responding in writing. I ask my students to describe the details they see in the picture as well as the feeling connected to the same image. These visual texts also offer the opportunity to learn how to discuss and write about an image by using a specific language based upon perception. It may include terms such as focal point, figure-ground contrast, repetition or similarity (shape and size), and color contrast. I also require my students to compare and contrast the visual images to the literary texts covered in this unit. I want my students to learn that a visual text is the result of a creative process that is not different from the one the author follows in composing a written text.
The written documents we study all follow a precise order that helps my students understand, analyze, discuss, synthesize and evaluate. First of all, all my students read Great Expectations. The AP students complete the first reading at home, and they also have to annotate the text. They are asked to focus on traditional literary features like tone, symbols, theme, and conflict. The other students have a modified plan that allows time for class reading since they need my help to understand the text. The AP students also have to select quotes, phrases, or words about Pip's visions that they deem relevant to start a daily discussion on Facebook. In class, I require some journal writings in response to passages that the students or I select. They also have to write analytical responses about the characters we encounter while considering how certain literary elements like diction, setting, and tone contribute to their characterization.
The essays included in this unit have different reading levels, so that each group reads the text that is appropriate to its reading skills. A pre-reading activity that varies according to the needs of different students precedes the reading and annotation of the essay, and they are followed in class and at home by various writing assignments focusing first on details and then on other literary elements. During our class discussions, I expect my students to write their notes in their journals while I write on a poster that I keep on the board, so that the weakest students can always refer to find ideas for their written responses or further analyze their initial thoughts.
The unit concludes with the writing of a document: a synthesis essay in which each student will be required to discuss the feeling of love, the details that make it visible, and ultimately what the lover can see. They have to document their thesis with facts or details from the various visual and written documents examined and studied in the unit. The students with special needs conclude it with the PowerPoint presentation only.