Advanced Placement Students
The novella, Heart of Darkness, is a very challenging task for my AP students because as I mentioned in the Student Background section they do not arrive in my class with excellent reading comprehension skills. They have potential skills but they need a lot of instruction in the form of supporting strategies to overcome the difficulty that this text presents. My students are, in fact, at what Jean Piaget calls the concrete-operational stage. They cannot think abstractly and do not understand what can be inferred from a written or visual text. My goal is to move them from this initial stage to the formal-operational one in which they are able to solve abstract problems.
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To achieve this goal, my students' first need is to build some prior-knowledge about the time when it has been written, and the main historical facts about Congo, the place where most of the action takes place in Conrad's work through a very brief lecture immediately followed by a research activity.
What to Tell Students
Heart of Darkness was written between the end of 1898 and the beginning of 1899 and was first published in the Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. As Robert Kimbrough states in his analysis, the novella appeared in three installments in consecutive monthly issues of Blackwood's from February through April 1989, and was later on collected (1902) in the volume Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories.
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This time period is completely unknown to my students as well the culture of colonialism in Europe. Our first activity, even before we begin to read the text, will be to gather some biographical information about the author and then to extend the study to Congo, the setting of this novella. I will expect them to find information about the exploration and civilization of Congo, how explorations were conducted, and the results of colonization from the perspective of the Belgian Government. (Our library might not have all the resources we need, so I plan to bring my students to the New Haven Public Library first and then to plan two other field trips to the Sterling Library that is within walking distance of our school).
Research Plan
Their research will cover the following topics: the physical features along the Congo river, the climate of this region and possibly data of the climate around the time when Conrad wrote the novella; an in-depth study of the population, its tribe, rituals, rules, social and/or political organization in comparison to the social and/or political, and military organization introduced by the Belgian who were the real colonizer of the area. I expect them to find information about the stations or those centers with a comparatively large population where European and native people shared common interests; the political organization, judicial system, and the religion of the native populations. It is also important to find information about the economic, commercial, and financial conditions; the relevance of animal and vegetable products; how agriculture was practiced before the colonization and immediately after; the internal communications and waterways.
While my students are researching, I will instruct them to prepare an Annotated Bibliography of all the sources they find, read, and use to collect information. Our annotated Bibliography will focus on the MLA citation of the source followed by notes that can be quoted paragraph(s), paraphrased paragraph(s), and/or a summary of the essential point of the source. I will not ask my students to write any evaluation of the sources because at this point they do not have the skills to accomplish this task. The pedagogy behind this choice is to teach them the skills of conciseness in summarizing content.
When their research is concluded, I will divide the class in groups of four. Each group will work on specific topics:
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Group one will present the physical features of Congo and its climate
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Group two will illustrate the information about the population and what the stations were or represented
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Group three will work on political, judicial system, and the religion of the area
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Group four will discuss the economy of Congo including agriculture and the importance of animal products
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Group five will give us an overview of the communication and waterways.
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Presentation
When my students have finished their research, they need to present the results of their work. I plan this activity because my students need to learn how to talk to audience about specific content as requested by the new Common Core Standards. This will also improve their skills to synthesize various documents organically. During our presentation, I will guide them to analyze and discuss how the European viewed the so-called process of "civilizing" the Congo. Our discussions will focus on the methods they adopted and the effects they may have had on the native populations. I plan to ask specific questions to scaffold their learning as suggested by Kyleen Beers
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and guide them according to Vygotsky's theory
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What does this information about Congo and how it has been colonized tell you? What major thematic ideas do you see?
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What morals or ethical principles does this colonization reveal?
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What about the Congolese society? How would you define it? What qualities does it portray?
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Before passing to the reading of Conrad's novella, I want my students to reflect on the information they have just found about Congo as a community. This writing activity has the purpose to strengthen my students' writing fluency and abilities to discuss thematic ideas as required by College Board for AP students. Specifically, I will expect them to respond to the following prompts:
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From the study you have just concluded, what did you learn about the Congolese community? What kind of relationships did you notice? Did you notice any form of collective support? What about the relationships between the natives and the colonizers?
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Which group was socially isolated? Both groups, the colonizers and colonized? One of the two? Explain.
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How were the colonizers responding to the needs of the natives? Why?
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How the natives were responding to the needs of the colonizers?
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Our discussions together with the information they have collected from their research will give my students the adequate prior knowledge to understand Conrad's novella as suggested by Piaget and Vygotsky.
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Heart of Darkness: Reading
When we have finished presenting, analyzing, and discussing the results of our research of Congo under the Belgian rule, my students will have built the prior-knowledge they need to understand and appreciate this difficult text. When I assign the reading, I will expect them to read only a few pages because of the text difficulty but also because my students have never been exposed to any nineteenth century literature before. More pages or even higher expectations will discourage them when I actually want to continue building knowledge.
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My experience has also taught me that reading a few pages at a time takes away the burden students perceive with reading and allow a real rereading in class for close analysis. I will then assign six to ten pages to read as homework. In class, I will also spend some time close reading specific excerpts to study the narrator and how he characterizes Marlow or how he views Congo. I will then divide the class in groups of four and each group (grouping improves students' self-confidence, peer learning, and analysis
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) will analyze the characterization of Marlow and Kurtz through:
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Setting
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Diction
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Imagery and figurative language
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Syntax
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For each literary technique, the students will have to explain how the literary device reveals the character and how it helps the reader understand who the character is. The group analyzing the importance of setting will have to determine how the environment affects or does not affect Marlow or any other character. They can also determine whether setting contributes to tone, or whether it foreshadows the character's inner feelings. (The specific instructions on how to analyze each literary technique are in the Lesson Plans sections). Each group, then, will share and discuss for the same pedagogical reasons I have already mentioned.
At this point, I will plan to analyze the thematic ideas presented by the novel. To begin with, I will start class by writing this prompt on the board:
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After reading and analyzing Conrad's novella, discuss how Marlow's first experience with the natives he encounters illuminates the work as a whole.
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During our discussion, I will lead them to consider the relationship Marlow starts or does not start with the natives, the language he uses, and the details he conveys. I will also ask them to consider how the narrator presents these natives to the readers. In other words, I want my students to analyze whether the natives try any kind of interactions with Marlow or whether they display a completely passive attitude. I will also direct them to consider Marlow's observations and description of the natives he has hired for his expedition along the Congo River to Kurtz's stations or immediately after he is attacked by the natives defending Kurtz's station. I will also ask them:
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What do these interactions, lack of interactions, prejudice, and/or attitudes tell you about this community (Marlow and the natives)?
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What moral values do you identify? Why?
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What ethical values does this community display? Or does it not have any ethical values. If so, why?
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Who would you say is isolated in this community? Marlow and/or the company or the natives?
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What about Kurtz? Is his suffering isolated or is it a reflection of a social isolation? How? Why?
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Since we are in an arts school and we always try to combine the arts with the academics, I will ask my students to conclude this part of the unit with a creative project in which they express their final conclusion about the culture that Conrad's novella presents. They also have to determine Marlow's identity by responding to this question:
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What shapes his identity? Who is he at the end of the novella?
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How much Marlow is an active member of his community during the expedition?
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Is he completely isolated or is he not? Why?
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Their creation can be a video, a painting, or any other form they choose according to Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence.
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Sophomore Students
This group of students will read Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but before we start reading, I plan to implement various pre-reading strategies to help them build the necessary prior-knowledge
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. The initial lesson will focus on understanding the meaning of "community". My class is a community but my students do not necessarily understand what it means and, of course, they cannot determine whether we have any values or what our dynamics are.
On the first day, I will write on the board the following prompt:
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Scenario: you are the survivors of a catastrophic hurricane that has swept away our entire city. Destruction is everywhere. There is no electricity, no telephone or internet; stores are destroyed as well as streets, cars, trains, or planes. You are forced to experience the unimaginable. You have no shelter, no food you can buy, no doctors or nurses, no standing homes, and no adults. You know each other because you were attending the same school and you were in class when the hurricane hit New England. What are you going to do? I will walk around and record your conversations.
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While they are talking in groups, I will record their thoughts on the board to compare and contrast with the opening scene of the novel. As homework, I will ask them to write one page reflections with particular attention to the thoughts they did not share. I will also ask them to explain how they were feeling: were they scared? Were they feeling safe because they were not alone or were they feeling alone?
For my second class, I will present them a more complex scenario:
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This is your second day after the hurricane. You are hungry but you do not have your usual food. You would like to take a shower, but you have no running water. You slept on the bare ground and you feel cold. What are you going to do to have food, water, and shelter? How are you going to ask for help? Who is going to be your leader? Why? If not, why?
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They will discuss as a whole class and then they will share their decisions. I will record what they say on the board and then I will ask them to write one-page reflections on their decisions for homework.
Lord of the Flies: Reading
This group of students needs more specific intervention for reading because they either have a reading level lower than grade ten or they display other special emotional or learning needs.
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At this point, they have enough prior-knowledge to understand and get really engaged in the reading of the novel. I plan to assign the first chapter as homework, but we will be rereading in class too because I know that a good number students will not read at home. Modeling is the best method to teach them how expert readers do make knowledge of the text. Therefore, during the in-class reading, I will model how to understand meaning through the context when they encounter difficult and unknown words. I will interrupt the reading to say aloud what I think and how I use specific details to analyze the characters and their attitudes. In the same way, I will teach them how I notice tone and how I identify the connotations of some words, figurative language, and imagery. I will model reading and analysis for chapter two and then my students and I will be thinking aloud for chapter three, four, and if necessary five too. After that, my students should have learned how to read and analyze proficiently on their own. I will intervene only with those students who continue struggling.
Analysis and Discussion
After reading each chapter, I will divide the class in groups of three or four (the composition of the groups will change every time according to how the students reach or do not reach the lesson objectives). Each group will be assigned a different task so I differentiate according to the learning strengths of the group. Specifically, I plan to assign the following questions:
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After reading the first chapter (I will propose the same question for every chapter so that my students know in advance after the first two chapters what to annotate during their reading), what character stands out to you? Why? How? Write one or two pages analysis supporting your statement with appropriate text references.
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What conflict do you notice? How? Explain and support with text references.
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What differences or similarities do you notice between how the characters react and/or do in this chapter compared to your reactions and actions in scenario one (hurricane aftermath)?
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What stands out to you? Why? How?
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Describe the setting and discuss whether it affects or does not affect the character or the conflict.
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Consider how the character(s) act, what they say, or do, and discuss what aspect of human nature the character(s) reflect(s).
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What values do these characters display? How do you know? Explain
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How would you describe the community described in the chapter we have just read?
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What differences do you notice in the community described in the chapter we just read and the previous one?
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How would you describe the relationship among these characters? Why?
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Who do you think Ralph is at the end of the novel? What experiences, conflicts, or values have shaped his present identity?
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What identity can you infer for the other students at the end of the novel? Explain how this new identity has been shaped.
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(More specific strategies are in the Lesson Plan Section).
When we have completed the reading and analysis of the novel, I will plan an assessment which will be divided in two parts: first I will engage them in a group discussion and then they will write a two pages paper. Specifically, for the first part of the assessment, I will divide the class in groups of four and I will give them the following instructions:
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List the values that you noticed among the characters of the community of Lord of the Flies
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Discuss the effect of these values on the community of Lord of the Flies
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Create a similar scenario but set it in 2014
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After amply presenting and discussing the different scenarios each group created, I will ask my students to write their reflections in response to this prompt:
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After your group discussion, the values that you have noticed among the characters of Lord of the Flies, and the scenario you have rebuilt, what is your theory for their behavior, reactions, actions, and beliefs? Explain by using textual evidence from Golding's novel and from your scenario(s). Your paper has to be two pages long.
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