Advanced Placement Students
This second part of the unit focuses on the same objectives of reading analyzing, comparing, discussing and writing how different authors present the unit themes – coming of age and immigration -- and how specific problems or issues contribute to the characterization, but it also includes the students' research of other texts -- visual or non-visual, plays, novels, and poems written in different centuries – and articles from newspapers. They have to analyze the text, determine and discuss the theme or themes that illuminate(s) the work while comparing it to today's issue(s). At the end of each class, either as homework or as a closing activity, the students will write a creative piece in which they use the literary devices we have seen and analyzed to illustrate the theme(s). This section of the unit concludes with the reading of two essays,
Dwellings
by Linda Logan and
No Name
Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston, on the same themes: coming of age and immigration.
College Students
This group of students will read poems and lyrics which present and/or discuss the unit topic (the specific texts are in the Teaching Strategies Section), and some excerpts from the novel
Under the Feet of Jesus
. The students, who have a good reading level, will read the entire novel as homework and will analyze the excerpts I will bring to class. These students will also prepare a power point presentation of the plot, so they can fill in the parts that the struggling students will not read.
The fictional texts will be paired with other non-fictional texts: articles from the newspapers, editorials, and visual texts. I want to use paintings, photographs, video clips or short films on the same topic(s). At the same time, the students will research their own sources (articles, painting, and photographs) in our library and Art Gallery. They will analyze these sources following the strategies they have learned (the instructions for this analysis are in the Lesson Plan section), and will present them to the class for discussion. Before concluding this part two of the unit, I hope to make a visit to the Yale University Art Gallery and/or British Center.