042312 - Annotated Bibliography

The unit of study for which this Annotated Bibliography will supplement is a unit on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Our textbook, The British Tradition, contains three of the tales that we will read and analyze in depth – The Prologue, The Pardoner’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Since this unit is taught in collaboration with the junior history teacher, I will also cover Chaucer’s biography. Introducing a little biographical information will help my students understand the era in which Chaucer lived and the social statuses of his characters. I believe understanding the characters is the key to understanding the Tales.

This unit is for my juniors, college prep level. My average ability level students will benefit from the three texts and two websites I have chosen because they will help to prepare them to read a difficult text. Background knowledge, comparative texts, and a guide on how to understand the Tales and the characters will help my students identify with the era, the characters themselves, the pilgrimage, and any underlying political and/or religious issues surrounding the characters/pilgrimage. The websites I have chosen will also help my students with vocabulary and by showing them an image of the pilgrimage to help set the stage.

Trade Books:

1. Ackroyd, P. (2005). Chaucer. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

·         Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Estimate: 9.3

·         Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Chaucer-Ackroyds-Brief-Peter-Ackroyd/dp/0385507976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335196508&sr=8-1

This text offers a short biography on Chaucer. It covers all of the important events in his life, including his birth (indicating the exact date of birth of Chaucer is unknown), background information on his family life, jobs throughout his life, his ties/relationship to the royal family, his literary works, and his death on October 25, 1400. The book also discusses how Chaucer’s poetry helped to shape the literary works of his time, and the influential poets Chaucer admired. It also talks about literary techniques Chaucer uses in the Tales.

I like this text because it’s just enough biographical information, just enough historical information to paint the society in which Chaucer lived and wrote about, and just enough introductory information about The Canterbury Tales for anyone to get a general idea of medieval life.  I would use this text at the beginning of the unit to teach my students about medieval culture, social statuses, the feudal system, and generally about the society at the time. I would go through a timeline of Chaucer’s life and analyze his jobs/relationship with the royal family. It would also lead into the next part, which would be a discussion of the different “roles” in the medieval society (characters from the tales).

2. Schlitz, L. A., & Byrd, R. (2007). Good masters! Sweet Ladies!: voices from a medieval village. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press.

·         Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Estimate: 2.1

·         Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Masters-Sweet-Ladies-Medieval/dp/0763650943/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335196573&sr=1-1

This text is a collection of monologues that the author, Laura Amy Schlitz, wrote for her students to perform. The 22 monologues offer different stories from and about different characters that have different roles in a medieval society. Together these monologues paint a picture of a typical medieval English village. The characters include a lord’s nephew, a shepherdess, a pilgrim, a falconer’s son, a glassblower’s apprentice, a begger, and more. Just like The Canterbury Tales, these characters’ stories are united with the overall purpose of telling one story – life in a medieval village.

I like this text because it begins with a beautiful illustration of a typical medieval manor that depicts the different characters in their societal roles. It also breaks up with the monologues with little historical background information sections – the three-field system, a medieval pilgrimage, the crusades, falconry, Jews in medieval society, and towns and freedom.

I would use this text prior to reading The Canterbury Tales in class to introduce the idea of different small stories contributing to the overall larger picture. It’s written, in a more modern verse, but similar to Chaucer’s. The author does use some medieval terminology, which is defined in a sidebar. Since the language is more modern, it’s easier to understand than Chaucer’s medieval vocabulary, but can act as a “warm-up” to get my class used to reading verse. In addition, since the characters each have different roles in society, it’s another refresher of those roles in medieval society. The historical breaks are a good refresher for the historical information to help understand the background of the Tales.

3. Swisher, C. (2003). Understanding the Canterbury tales. San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books

·         Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Estimate: 10.7

·         Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Canterbury-Tales-Great-Literature/dp/1560067829/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335196632&sr=1-1

This text begins with background information on Chaucer, and then goes into a summary of each character, the overall plot, and literary devices and themes that Chaucer uses throughout the Tales. It also gives ideas for further exploration and research, and an appendix that summarizes themes Chaucer addresses – love, marriage, masculinity, humanity, humor, etc. The very last part of the book is a brief timeline of his life.

I would use this book to introduce each character to my class and discuss the themes Chaucer addresses. The summaries of the characters will help the students understand each character and his/her role in society. It also summarizes each tale, which will give my students a pre-knowledge about each one that they can think about while reading. Hopefully, with having this pre-knowledge of the characters and their tales, my students will have an easier time reading the Tales.

Websites:

1.       Benson, L. (n.d.).  Map of Canterbury Way (the road to Canterbury). ATG Home § Academic Technology Group. Retrieved February 24, 2012, from http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/gp/cant-map.htm

I chose this website because I like how it shows a visual image of the actual route the pilgrims take. I would just use this site to show the map to my students so that they can envision how long the pilgrims walked, and the timeframe it would take to make that pilgrimage. This would also lead into a discussion about how and why pilgrimages were popular in the medival times, and their main purpose.

2.       Canterbury Tales Vocabulary flashcards | Quizlet. (n.d.). Flash cards, vocabulary memorization, and study games | Quizlet. Retrieved February 25, 2012, from http://quizlet.com/6505889/canterbury-tales-vocabulary-flash-cards/

I chose this website because it reviews some medieval terminology that my students may struggle with during this unit. It’s a good site to help my students define the medieval words they’ll read and hear, and they can quiz themselves on the definitions. I would introduce this to them as a way to test their knowledge and study for a unit vocabulary test. I could also use this site as a daily warm-up to introduce a couple new words to them a day throughout the lesson. The main purpose for this website in my class during this unit would be as a vocabulary strategy.

3.       Geoffrey Chaucer Timeline of Important Dates. (n.d.). Shmoop: Homework Help, Teacher Resources, Test Prep. Retrieved February 21, 2012, from http://www.shmoop.com/geoffrey-chaucer/timeline.html

I chose this website because it clearly depicts all of the important events in Chaucer’s life. I would use this website to supplement the first lesson on Chaucer’s biography so my students are not only hearing about Chaucer’s life, but also seeing and reading it on the white screen. I would also tell my students this would be a good resource for them as a study guide for the text on Chaucer’s biography and medieval life.

 

Overall, I would mainly use these websites as student resources to help them learn and review as they study Chaucer, medieval life and culture, and The Canterbury Tales.

Blog 7 - March 26, 2012

Blog 7 - March 26, 2012
And the final two content-area websites that I have found and will use in my classroom are...

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/ - This website is  useful website for my students to use when doing their research papers. It thoroughly explains what a research paper is, why it is important, strategies for writing a research papers, strategies for doing the actual research, how to choose a topic, and where to begin. This website also offers the same informatin on other genres of writing, for example an argumentative essay, exploratory papers, and annotated bibliogrpahies. The information on these types of writing could also be useful to my students as they write those papes as well. It's a great resource for them to refer to.

http://www.kidsgen.com/ - This is another website I use in my creative writing class. This website has a bunch of short stories written for kids, but these stories are good examples of creative writing. I would have my students go to this website, choose a short story they like, and interpret it for me. What was the main idea? Who were the main characters? What was the moral? What made it "createive?" Then, I would have them write their own creative short story using the same theme.

I also found this video that I would show to my creative writing class. It talks about improving the story you are currently writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC7g5TLMfgs

Blog 6 - March 12, 2012

Blog 6 - March 12, 2012
Question: If pre-writing is so important to the writing process, how can we, as teachers, help our students understand and carry-out the pre-writing process?

Answer: Prewriting is one of the most important, yet overlooked stages in writing. Writing at the high school level requires higher cognitive and literacy skills. Most students do not meet the national standards in writing. Why? There is the misconception from high school teachers that by the time the students get to them, they should already know how to write. There is also the misconception that teaching writing, literaracy, and comprehension stops at the primary grades. Once students get to the higher level grades, they need to be taught a higher level way of thinking in order to succeed in their literacy in college and career.

There is scientific evidence that students produce better writing after they have completed a pre-writing process that has helped them identify main points, identify details that support those main points, and organize their thoughts. The reason for this is, many novice writers cannot handle the high cognitive demands of writing that include finding the resources to formulate and plan the writing, generate the content, and translate their ideas and information into written language. It's important to scaffold these writing steps so that students do not shut down becuase they feel overwhelmed and incapable.

One way teachers can help scaffold the writing process steps is by modeling the writing process themselves. A teacher can use overheads, the chalkboard, the computer with a projector screen, etc. to model how they themselves would create an outline or take notes. Much of the confusion comes from students no knowing exactly what information is important and should be included. By modeling, teachers are giving the students an example on which to build their own notes.

Graphic organizers are an excellent way to help students along in the prewriting process. They are designed to be a scaffolding tool, so why not use them? Teachers can provide students with note-taking graphic organizers, outline organizers, paragraph organziers, sentence organizers, etc.

Teachers can also use technology programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word as organizers. the main purpose of PowerPoint is to present. Therefore, only the main ideas are listed and the details are explained in more detail during the oral presntation. This could be useful in helping students weed out their main points. Excel and Word can work together in creating an outline. Main points can be listed in Excel, with a hyperlink to the detailed information in Word. Cutting and Pasting cells is a quick and easy way to organize, and reorganzie, the main ideas.

Another important part of the prewriting process is feedback. Teacher and peer feedback are important for a student's progress in the writing process.

Overall, the benefits of prewriting are numerous. It gives students the ability to think through their "work in progress" by brainstorming to identify the main points, including multi-media, like graphics, to enhance their work, and refine their thoughts by "talking out" the major points. Using technological based organizers also introduces students to new ways of thining about writing and organizing.

References:

Bacci, T. (2008). Invention and Drafting in the Digital Age: New Approaches to Thinking about Writing. Clearing House, 82(2), 75-82. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from the ERIC database.

Brown, M. (2011). Effects of Graphic Organizers on Student Achievement in the Writing Prcess. Field-Based Research Block 1 - Southwester College Professional Studies, 1, 1-33. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from the ERIC database.

Holmes, K. (2003). Show, Don't Tell The Importance of Explicit Prewriting Instruction. The Clearing House, 76(5), 241-244. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from the ERIC database.

Lee, C. C., & Tan, S. C. (2010). Scaffolding writing using feedback in students' graphic organizers - novice writers' relevance of ideas and cognitive loads. Educational Media International, 47(2), 135-153. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from the ERIC database.

Blog 5 - March 5, 2012

Blog 5 - March 5, 2012
Two content-area websites that I can use in my classroom for my students are:

http://www.edutopia.org/ - There are a lot of useful videos and blogs on this site that could be useful in my classroom. I know that this site is mainly for teachers and teacher development, however, we have an Advisory Period and there is some useful information that can be used for my upperclassmen. For example, there is a video about "Connecting High School to College and Career." This would be a great class for juniors, as they begin to look at the college process, and seniors, as they are deciding on what college or university to attend, what to study, etc. I could further this class by giving them a writing assignment about what their interests are, what colleges/universities do they want to know more about, etc.

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/suffixes/high-school/suffixmeaning-match/ - I would have my students use this website as a fun way of reviewing/reinforcing vocabulary. They can play games that teach them vocabulary building strategies, make crossword puzzles to help them review vocabulary words, and play "brain training games" to help them with skills such as memory, visual recall, speed, etc. It also gives a wide list of additional vocabulary learning resources. These resources include PSAT and SAT preparation, which would be especially useful for my juniors and seniors.