Lesson plans

Thanks for the suggestions yesterday. I'll check out some of those films.

Today I finished watching King Corn and it got me thinking. For the next four weeks I'm covering persuasive writing, then next semester I have to cover expository writing. When do we cover literature, you may ask? Oh, isn't that the million dollar question we've all been asking?

Apparently I'm supposed to spend 8 weeks - let me repeat that - EIGHT WEEKS reading and studying To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a fantastic story to read to yourself. It's a tedious job to read aloud to 25 teenagers for eight weeks.

Instead I show the movie over two days so they're familiar with the story and we read Night, then do some poetry with our left over time.

Don't tell anybody.

Anyway, so what I think I'll do for persuasion is show An Inconvenient Truth after all. I'll make them fill out some kind of worksheet to keep them paying attention because Al Gore on global warming isn't exactly every kid's idea of a fascinating film.

Then, during the expository writing phase I'll have them write a food diary for a week, then discuss their eating habits and the eating habits of most Americans. Then I'll show them King Corn so they can see how food's produced and be appalled at how much of their body is made of corn. Then we'll have another discussion, then I'll show Supersize Me.

Then I'll give them extra credit for reading Fast Food Nation, but only because we don't have a class set of the book so I can't require them to read it.

Then I can make them write a well informed essay on eating habits and America. It's too bad I can't make them read The Jungle because then I might swear them off beef altogether. Because I hate America.*

I can't have them read The Jungle anyway because we do not have a class set of the book. Also, it's 11th grade material.

We don't really have a class set of anything except books that suck.



*I do not really hate America.