Giving Students Choice Can Allow Less Anxiety About Shakespeare and His Words.

Shakespeare Oh Shakespeare. How you intimidate your readers, yet gain a growing audience that adores you. It is a known fact that our students will feel intimidated by William's language that he uses as well as his character names even seem confusing at times. Our job is to encourage student performance in order to get them excited to read about his plays. I read "Sparking: A Methodology to Encourage Student Performance" by Joan Ozark Holmer and I really liked all of the ideas that was discussed about what students did in order to portray Shakespeare's motifs. First and foremost, Joan identifies sparking as a "flexible technique that allows for and encourages student performance in  various ways but does not mandate traditonal acting"(90). Of course it is always nice to traditionally act our scenes for the class, it is always great to incorporate different ways to do this into the curriculum as well. This allows individual freedom while still bringing performance to the assignment (90). Some ideas of how sparking is illustrated throughout the course is through group projects that plan for class discussion, handouts, acting out performances, and in depth topics such as the Shakespearean theatre, culture and society. Some students used debates, skits, discussions, interviews, traditional acting out of scenes, dramatic performance in order to give it a contemporary twist to it, overall tapping into all of the students interests. Students are encouraged to use primary and secondary sources, music, outside dialouge, bibliographies, explanatory assignments, research on prostitution and brothels, symbolism of costumes, the audience in the theatre, research about instruments of the time period versus modern instruments in order to perform a visual aspect of Shakespeare (92). Joan mentions that "sometimes sparking provides quite unexpected advantages" (93). This allows the students to have a better understanding of Shakespeare's time period and the language he uses in contemporary ways. Teachers should encourage students to even dress up in atire that was typical of Shakespearean time. This allows for the students to make connectoions and comparisons. Even allowing them to perform it at home and video recording it would give them a chance to advance their technology skills as well as introduce the class to the vocabulary of the literature and theatre of his time. I thought it was also a nice add in that Joan mentions a student who studied aboard openly shared their perspective of how different cultures value different concepts, this hopefully can happen in each of our classes as well.
I really like these ideas because it gives students individuality and choice when overwhelmed with Shakespeare. Its a contemporary twist that gives students more options of interest. Such as how the Manga version of Romeo and Juliet does. I liked this version because it gave you a different aspect to look at and read about. Yet it was a bit confusing to me because it was hard to follow the characters visually at first but got the hang of who was who in the end, Similiar to how it is just reading Shakespeare's plays, because he names his characters so close, like Grumio and Gremio, ect.

I think it was beneficial to read these articles and allowing us to have choice in which one we wanted to read because as sparking gives students choice, these articles gave teachers a choice of how they want to conquer teaching Shakespeare.

How far will you go to save your/ families lives? How can Educators Improve Class With Technology

The Hunger Games is by far my favorite book that we have read yet this semester. I'll go as far as even saying the best book I've read in a really long time. I'm even considering the second one as a summer read! I would absolutely love to use this in my classroom and believe that my students could really engage in this book and have empathetic reactions to the characters of their age group. A lot of discussion questions could really be generated and get the students thinking about the situations that Katniss, Gale and Peeta as well as the other characters are involved in.

Such as: the relationships of the characters and how it helps define their personality, specifically Katniss. How does Katniss's feelings of Gale play in the feelings or pretend feelings for Peeta. Are they actually in love? The idea that all of the killings are taped for the population to watch, how do you think the population reacts to this, even though we don't get to read about this aspect. What is the cruelest part of the hunger games? Are the viewers manipulated to think that the hunger games is 'entertainment'?
Student's could write about how they would react if they were forced into such a thing, or think of something else similiar to the hunger games that would effect them. Or even just imagining how it would be if the US changed to the 12 districts tomorrow, and you were forced to invade private property in order to hunt and kill the food for your family. (Just that alone, I couldn't imagine)
Did you believe she had it in her to win all along? OR does the author do a good job at making you think that but then taking it back, as if she doesn't have what it takes.
- I don't know, because when I first started reading this I knew that she was going to win. Even though, at times the author made me doubt what I thought I knew. I even thought about what if both Peeta and Katniss won together, since it was pictured them as a team, all along. And what do you know, they both did. I normally do not like when I am able to predict books, yet this book didn't make me feel that way.

I liked the articles we had to read this week as well and it made me think that I need to show my students how much media influences their daily lives even though they might not realize it. As well as how media influeces our identities, morals and choices. The more that students use media in their literary lives the less resistant they will be to reading. The more teachers use media in their classroom the less difficult it could be to motivate the students to read according to the articles we read this week. I appreciated all of the research that Tarasiuk did as well as the activities she did. As well as how the students reacted! I really liked the digital book talks. This experience shows how much teachers should be involved in their students lives and learn from them. All of this reading makes me more and more excited about learning how to teach and actually getting into the classroom!

What matters the most is our students - What they can handle, take on, and even challenge.

This weeks readings were really valuable to us because I do not think we realize how often censorship occurs in our classrooms. We think since we are the sole commander of the classroom, we should be able to put anything we want into our classroom, yet this is not true. It is important to remember your values and what you believe in when deciding which books to use just as much as it is important to understand your students/parents/adminstrative board. I think it is a really scetchy subject and quite frank I am a little scared to have an encounter. Yet, knowing myself I always stand up for what I believe in, so if I ever encountered a situation like this, I know I would do and fight for what I believed in, especially if it deals with my students whom I will value very much. Its a hard topic to discuss because during adolescent times, students want to read things that relate to them, and this just so happens to be topics that do talk about reality whether that be- race, drugs, sex, divorce, highschool gangs and drop outs, violence and sexuality. They are trying to find themselves and by reading things that deal with how others handle situations are important for them. So why can't we talk about stuff that include race and vulgar vocabulary!? I will be a part of their coming to age, so why can't my literature that I choose reflect this?
- I liked NCTEs The Student's Right to Read because it had a lot of good information in it. It is important to have the community involved whether to back you up and to talk offence (even though we don't want this) we want involvement! They need to support us and defend us like the article talks about. This article talks about how censorship poses a threat to education. - "Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distored picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture" . Here even what we as teacher look up to are stating this loud and clear. So how is it that we still have problems with literature that just try to keep students in touch with their realities? Students miss out. They are "denied the freedom to explore ideas and pursue truth wherever and however they wish" IF you didn't get a chance to read this, I really recommend reading it and having it on file in your binders for later date because it really defends us and our choices of books in the classroom. As it talks about establishing committees, getting others involved and even putting together a portfolio of which books are chosen and why they are in order to have documentation for those who disagree which I think is fantastic.
- It was hard to identify completely with Ch.6 of Web because I haven't had the pleasure of reading Huck Finn but I did enjoy the article and learning of its controversy.

- I think Feed was an interesting book to read and it would work well to find out how students would react to it. I think there would be cool connections of eras and to see where our reality is at and how close it is to the book, and what it could become due to technology and the people's increase of wanting and feeling that they need the latest technology out. Will this take over our children? (hence picture)
 Although I really liked the chatting in the head, because communication matters to us so much, yet as a Teacher I fear it. I wouldn't want my students talking in their minds and me not being aware of it. This would be the biggest distraction I could think of for my students. We think that small talk amongst each other near by is a problem we have to deal with, imagine the secretive talk! What could this lead to?! Even the bad things like where would bullying play in? Isn't this what our kids face today, imagine if it went straight to their minds. AH! (shaking my head to get that terrible thought out) But anyway, this book is a good book to view culture and how it influences us so much in our daily lives. I would introduce to this book in a fun way in order to get my students involved despite the language and the ideas of 'going to the moon'. Otherwise, I see teachers having fun with this book, and that's what our kids can appreciate the most!