Visual Section
After the initial activity mentioned in the Unit Overview, my students' homework involves researching any images or video clips representative of how they initially think love is or think that they see it. They have to bring to class photographs, cards, printed images from magazines or whatever they find on the Internet. On the next day, I have a variety of images that they like so that they can start learning how to see the details in them. First of all, I ask them to spend few minutes observing the image they have and then respond to the following question: What do you see? This question requires them to observe the details in the picture, and by writing these details they practice how to describe something or someone they see. The second question follows after about five minutes, and it asks my students to write what they notice in that image. By asking them to notice details, I lead them to focus on specific colors, shapes, or other minutiae that may suggest what the creator of the picture means to communicate. When they complete their five-minute-long writing task, they have to pass the image they are writing about to their peer and share what they have written. Since the peer has the visual image that is the object of the writing, we can have a brief discussion that may help the writer see other details in it. When this activity is completed, I ask the students to respond to the following questions: After listening to your peer's feedback, do you notice other details? Why are these details important? Before passing to other questions, I add the following question: What is the purpose of this visual image? Why is it important?
At this point, I start to use the word composition, and I explain that the composition of each text, either visual or written, is "both the process of creating a text and the way in which a text is put together."
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The author uses compositional techniques that include the purpose (why do I present this picture and why do I want to include or exclude certain details?), structure (the subject of the picture, the color, the focus, the lines or patterns of color and shape), audience (for whom is this picture intended or what does this image need to have to appeal to the person or group of people I want to address or what details does it need to speak to the targeted audience?), and point of view (the perspective from which the artist presents the story). Point of view also involves the way the artist presents readers with materials.
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I tell my students that when we refer to point of view in visual images, we use the word frame. I explain the meaning of this word by displaying on the board an image (it can be any picture) and zooming in or out. When I zoom in, I want to frame a specific detail. Alternately, when I zoom out, I want to frame other surrounding details, and that variation changes my point of view because I give relevance to other elements that I think are important to an understanding of the image in its context. In order for them to understand this concept, I display on the board (LCD) four different framings of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother,
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and I ask the students to respond to what they see and what they notice in each photograph, but I also require them to compare and contrast the different versions to notice how the point of view or framing changes and how each different frame affects the overall meaning of the image.
I continue explaining that the context of a visual image is very important to thoroughly understand the artist's message.
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The context refers to all those specific events that occurred and contributed to the creation of the idea in the mind of the artist or of the writer if it is a written text. These circumstances can be connected to the personal experiences of the author or to the historical, political, or events that take place at the time when the idea is conceived and that can directly or indirectly affect the text. It is important to understand the origins of the idea presented in the text, the cultural assumptions of the author, and the assumptions that derive from a shared body of knowledge (I use the phrase common sense with the struggling students) on the part of the audience.
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I ask my students to research and define who the author of the visual text is, when he or she created this picture, his or her personal background, and their own assumption(s) about this picture. This exercise is extremely important for a second objective: to teach my students to determine the validity of their sources. Most of them, if not all of them, accept without questioning everything they find on the Internet. Now, researching the context of an image makes them aware that when they do not know the author of a source or when they cannot find other sources/documents validating what they have found, the source is not reliable.
The struggling students can benefit a lot from this section. The modification I implement for this group is based on the scaffolding of the skills they have just learned. In fact, I prepare a poster I keep in the classroom with the essential steps they need to follow in their critical analysis: see details, purpose, audience, structure, point of view, context by researching, and then write a close analysis.
Written Text Section
Now my next challenge is to use the skills we have learned in analyzing a visual text in reading and writing about a written text. At the same time, this section requires more specific modifications to reach all my students. I also differentiate texts and the length of the text. For instance, both the regular and AP students will read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, but the essays we study are different: the Honors and AP students read "Seeing" by Annie Dillard and the regular students read "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady, which is easier in its vocabulary and reading level and has a more evident connection to the theme of the unit. "Seeing" by Annie Dillard connects to the theme of love, but it can also scaffold or reinforce the ability to see details and reflect on the literary conventions - purpose, structure, audience, and point of view -- that we have just applied in the previous section. All the other struggling students read "The Breakups That Got under My Skin" by Kerry Cohen.
The first text of this unit is Great Expectations. Charles Dickens successfully depicts the emotions that Pip feels for Estella, Pip's sister, Joe, Magwitch, and Miss Havisham. The detailed descriptions of the characters or of the setting, the adjectives Dickens uses for specific psychological situations, and the appropriateness of the symbols in the novel can help my students understand how one sees and describes a specific behavior that is the result of a specific feeling. For instance, Barbara Hardy states that in Great Expectations "food is used to define various aspect of love … and meals are often carefully placed in order to underline and explain motivation and development."
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Magwitch asks for food when he meets Pip for the first time. The convict needs someone to love or take care of , and Pip will be the person to work and live for. The hands and the chains described in the novel are symbolic too, and they help the reader understand Pip's feelings on various occasions. Other important symbols connected to certain feelings are Miss Havisham's wedding dress, the household, and Pip's room. My students have to infer different feelings from the detailed descriptions of how Estella speaks to Pip or laughs or how his sister, Joe, and Miss Havisham treat him. Dickens's novel requires "deep attention" in order to be fully understood, but, according to N. Katherine Hayles, today's students are more capable of "hyper attention" because they "have acquired a shield, so that normal stimulation is felt as boredom."
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Her hypothesis is that we need to find a stimulant to help the students concentrate. Media affects the brains of children by favoring a different synaptogenesis, which means that today's students have brains wired differently from those of people in previous generations when media was not such an important aspect of everyday life. Hayles also suggests that "media stimulation, if structured appropriately, may contribute to a synergistic combination of hyper and deep attention."
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My students, at least not those who are in the AP class, will probably find the novel slow and boring because they are not able to concentrate on it for a long period of time. They switch focus rapidly and seek high levels of stimulation.
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My challenge is to help everyone appreciate the details of this text and hopefully engage them in a close analysis of it.
In order to achieve this goal, I want to use the extremely popular Facebook to help students write, discuss, analyze and see how Pip reacts to Estella's attitude of superiority over and her disgust for a simple boy. Facebook is something that students really like, and it may stimulate their interest. I also want to implement differentiated instruction and, consequently, the AP and Honors students, who have some deep attention, first start reading and annotating Dickens's novel as homework, and we then open the discussion by selecting one short quote about how Pip sees Estella. That quote is put on Facebook together with a brief comment and/or question. I expect them to point out how beautiful, unreachable, but alluring she looks to Pip. All the other students will read the novel in class, so I can help them understand the text and the vocabulary before joining the discussion. At this point, all my students and I have to be on line together and start our analytical conversation. We can do this at school in the computer lab or at home at a predetermined time. In any case, during our on-line conversation, I continuously intervene by prompting them to reflect on specific adjectives, setting and characters, detailed descriptions, symbols, as well as the specifics of certain behaviors. One example of how I might interact with them could be the quote referring to the first encounter between Pip and Estella at Miss Havisham's house in chapter eight when Pip notices that Estella calls him a "boy" with "carelessness." Why? What does it tell him about her? Why does Pip notice this attitude? I will also direct them to reflect on another adjective, "scornful," and the related comparison of Estella to a queen. How does Pip see Estella? Is this love? Why? I can also add other quotes from the same chapter describing how he sees Estella and how he feels. I also lead the students to focus on the symbolic value of hands: how does she sees Pip's hands and what meaning does this vision have?
In class, the students have to write their reactions to this new approach in their journal, and I also require them to reread the passage and/or chapter we have discussed on Facebook. I also want them to use Pip's vision of his first encounter with Estella as a model to describe the vision they first had of a boy or a girl they like(d) or love(d). I follow this strategy - a Facebook discussion connected to in-class writings -- to analyze Pip's different feelings for his sister, Joe, Miss Havisham, and Magwitch; and we conclude with an analysis of how Pip changes his vision of all these characters throughout the novel. We discuss if his changes in vision are the direct consequence of changes he really sees or if they depend on his feelings. To maintain a high level of interest and understanding, I also ask my students to research an image that best reflects the topic of the daily discussion and to post it. This would certainly help the struggling students understand the main character of the novel.
While using Facebook, I want to use Twitter too because it accepts longer texts. This might involve other users of the same website in our literary discussion and therefore provide a rich exchange of analysis and interpretations my students can use in their own writing. The second benefit of this technique is that they witness that this text is still studied and read. Of course, I lead the discussion in order to notice and appreciate the details that makes the reader infer about reasons and feelings from the tone, the structure, diction, and figurative language that Dickens uses to convey his vision of love. This experiment also requires me to read the novel with the students and prompt analytical questions while the discussion evolves. In class, every day we write our reflections and work on the analysis of the character and on Dickens's uses of diction, tone, and setting to convey his vision.
After completing Dickens novel, we read "Seeing" by Annie Dillard in the AP and Honors classes. This essay focuses on the author's passion to see things closely, and it is also an excellent way to show my students how to observe the ordinary to such an extent that it becomes the love of one's life. Annie Dillard encourages the reader to look at simple things like the penny one sees and stop to pick it up or the fish that one sees in the water and one second later disappears; she does so to signify how much the act of seeing is "a deliberate gift, the revelation" because "nature does reveal as well as conceal." The author clearly underlines how she cannot see minutiae even though she tries "to keep her eyes open." Everything that is common and ordinary does not catch our attention as easily as the unusual event does, with the consequence that whatever is "utterly common" becomes "unseen."
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Dillard also reminds her readers that one sees what one expects to see. Therefore, I write on the board as pre-writing activity: "I see what I expect to see." I ask the students: What does Annie Dillard mean? Why? Explain your thought and support it with examples from your own experience. I want them to reflect on the fact we often create images in our minds, and we expect to see what we think or we expect that our peers understand what we mean because it is obvious to us. The reality is that the image we have does not correspond to reality, as Dillard clearly proves when she is looking for a bullfrog that she cannot see, whereas other campers could. She had to ask what color it is, and a fellow says, "Green." When at last she sees it, "the thing wasn't green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark." What does Annie Dillard mean? Why? To answer these questions, my students have to explain their thoughts and support them with examples from their own experience. Another interesting quote for a pre-reading activity is, "The point is that I just don't know what the lover knows; I just can't see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct."
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Annie Dillard ironically reminds the readers that we can see the infinite details only if we are driven by passion to look for those minutiae. When we love something we can see, and my desire is to help my students understand that it is absolutely normal not to see details. At the same time, we can learn how to see, and once we know how to see, we will love observing and writing.
At the end of each previewing activity, the students share and discuss their writing before I give them the text to read. I might not have the time to read the document in class, and consequently it is assigned as homework. They also have to underline three unknown words and determine their meanings from the context or consult a dictionary. I do not ask them to underline more unknown words because it becomes counterproductive even in higher-level classes. This strategy does not burden them, so they accomplish what I want and have the chance to remember new words and their meanings. In class, we share their homework, and this activity gives them the opportunity to learn other words presented by their peers.
The first close-reading of the article follows. For this activity, I want the students to reinforce the importance of annotating the text by asking them to highlight all those sentence(s), word(s), phrase(s) that grab their attention and to write brief notes in the form of questions, comments and/or connections. This is not the first time they have annotated a text, but I may model again how to determine the author's main idea, purpose, point of view, tone, structure, and diction. This process lets me underline how Dillard's first-person point of view enhances the childlike, enthusiastic tone she uses to lead the reader to discover the "surprise ahead."
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Her point of view reflects her passion and the joy she feels when she can see minutiae in the drop of water or the flying fish that stuns her and makes her desire to know more. Her passion is love, but it is also a feeling that slowly builds in the observer and helps him or her see more each time. At this point I ask the students to respond to our essential questions and to use Annie Dillard's essay to support their assumptions. A discussion of their quick write follows.
In class, we reread the essay, and I ask the students to point out quotes they think are interesting. They may underline various statements such as "What you see is what you get," "Many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision," "Seeing is very much a matter of verbalization," "The secret of seeing is the pearl of great price. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought, …"
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This activity gives us an opportunity to further analyze the theme of the essay and the powerful imagery Dillard uses. When we conclude the discussion, I ask the students to choose one of those quotes and write one-page reflections. As homework, I want them to isolate one passage like the one about Tinker Creek in which Dillard evidences her love, read it carefully and differentiate the descriptive part from the reflective one. Once they have done that, they need to follow her example by observing something that is common and ordinary in their surroundings. Another possible writing activity is to identify the words and phrases that determine the tone of her essay and explain how they create or contribute to Dillard's enthusiastic feeling, her passion. The last writing I assign requires my students to study the context - either biographical or historical -- surrounding this essay and explain how its effects contribute to Dillard's work. In concluding the study of this document, I ask my students to respond to the essential questions of the unit and use Dillard's essay to support their theories.
The next text I present is "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady. This essay is homework for the AP and Honors students to reinforce the skills we learned with the visual section and the close reading of "Seeing." The students who are in the regular class study Brady's essay because it has an easier vocabulary with short sentences, and the repetitions it contains help them understand its ironic and humorous tone. Before my students read this essay, I play a quick video clip
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as a pre-reading activity. This visual is based on an interpretation of a wife's role, and it has close connections to Brady's essay. In fact, both the video clip and the essay emphasize that a woman does what a man expects. She is not the decision maker in the couple. In the video, my students see numbers quickly passing by on a black background. They cannot read those numbers because they are blurred, but the color, red, attracts their attention. Then, they begin to distinctly read digital numbers, which clearly refer to time. Their color is still red, and the background is still black. The next image is quite interesting because they see a man and a woman who are in love. The scenes that follow show the man walking quickly as if he were running, but alone. A blurred image shows a figure that can be either the same man or the woman trying to follow him, but disappearing in a background of blurred white and grey clouds. The final scene shows the corner of a kitchen that is perfectly organized and clean to suggest what a wife, housewife, is expected to do every day. This image shows what a wife or woman in love can see, which is also Judy Brady's message in her essay.
I play the video first, and I ask my students to describe the details they see. I reinforce the same skills I use in the previous section on visual images in order to help them see, infer, and draw conclusions. On a poster I keep for the entire unit, I write their conclusions about this love relationship, the details they see that make them think it is love, as well as the ironic conclusion the creator of the video suggests. At the end of this pre-reading activity, I give the students the essay to read and annotate. At this point, I have to consider that the regular college class has students with different reading levels. I therefore create groups according to their reading skills, and those who struggle will work first with index cards containing scattered phrases or words from the essay. Specifically, I choose: "While I am going to school, I want a wife," "keep track of mine too," "keep them mended," "my physical needs," "I guess I can tolerate that," "details of my social life," "rambling complaints," "sensitive to my sexual needs," "when I feel like," "who wouldn't want a wife?"
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These students have to discuss and determine who the speaker is, what they see in this relationship, why the speaker says "who wouldn't want a wife?", what the tone is, and what words specifically express the tone. A discussion in the group follows. At this point they are ready to read the essay.
Judy Brady's essay contains a very detailed description of all the numerous things a loving wife accomplishes every day, from taking care of children, to preparing meals, ironing, cleaning, being open to doing everything the husband needs, entertaining his guests, being sensitive to his needs, and ultimately being ready to step aside when a new wife appears on the horizon. Is this the perfect image of a wife who shows true love? I also ask my students first to determine the audience of the essay and its purpose and then to identify which words or phrases support their conclusions. I have them read the essay a second time, focusing on how the stylistic device of repetition can contribute to the tone and the atmosphere the author creates. After we share and discuss their written responses, the students have to write how Judy Brady sees a wife and what connections they notice between the essay and the video. As the last activity for this part of the unit, I require the students to write a detailed description of what they see their mother do. They can use this essay as a model to learn how to see details and how to express a specific tone. An alternative to this writing prompt can be to select a quote or a few quotes that characterize a wife's love as the author sees it, and explain what specific details contribute to this vision. Another alternative essay can focus on how the sentence structure, repetition, and diction of the text contribute to its satirical tone.
My weakest students read "The Breakups That Got under My Skin" by Kerry Cohen published in The New York Times on July 27, 2008. This essay includes a very interesting visual image of a young woman, most likely a teenager or a college student because the lines of her face and upper body are soft but precise. This woman does not show her eyes, and the focus of the image is the tattoo of a "beat-up teddy bear" on her right arm next to her shoulder. One can clearly see three of the bear's paws with long white nails and three bandages. Her face is quite serious as if she were frozen in her grief. My weakest students read this image first, and then they write what they see, what they notice, what they do not see but they would expect to see, and why. After our initial sharing, I follow the same strategies I mentioned in describing the visual section of this unit in order to teach them to see as many details as possible. Before passing to the reading of the essay, I expect my students to reflect on why the tattoo shows a bear. What does the bear represent? Why a "teddy bear"? The students have to think about what they see and what their peers have seen, noticed, or expected, and to conclude whether the woman's attitude in the visual can be connected to love. If they think that it does reflect love, they explain what details lead them to this conclusion. At the end of this pre-reading activity, they are ready to read the essay by Kerry Cohen.
Since this is the struggling group, they need a vocabulary list containing all the words that they might not know. They read together first, and then they share their initial understanding of the essay. The tattoo, the bear, in the visual represents the author's grief in being separated from her father as well as her subconscious desire to support her mother after her divorce. The bear also reminds Cohen's negative experiences with three college students. If I see them losing interest or if they do not understand the theme, I ask them whether they know anyone who has experienced being in love and breaking up. I ask them to use their prior knowledge to describe the emotions involved in such experiences before rereading the essay and underlining all those details that refer to the author's emotions. I expect the students to notice the insecurities the author shares with her mother and this desire to let everyone know how much she suffers every time a relationship ends. They compare and contrast the author's behavior when the relationship ends and when she meets the man she marries. I want them to notice that every time she looks at her tattoos in the mirror, she sees the love she felt for some man and her similar feeling for her abandoned mother. Before concluding, I write on the board the following prompt: Have you ever been in love? Describe the feelings and the emotions you experienced. How did you show your happiness or grief? What were you thinking? You can use the essay by Cohen as a model for your writing.