As I was browsing the web for lesson plans that incorporated technology into the English classroom, I came across this column called “Twitter Me This: New Technology in the Language Arts Classroom.” The column focuses on a 10th and 11th grade English teacher, Shannon Reed, who is conducting a lesson on Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. Although The Crucible is a classic play that many of her students enjoyed in the past,
By modernizing the play, Shannon
was able to make the text more relevant.
Since her students were more invested in the text, they were more
willing to actively participate. In the
column Shannon states that the project even called for
close reading, as students were referring back to the text for the information
they needed. Overall, the project was
not only fun for the students, but it made the play more comprehensible and
attainable. As future educators, we need
to understand that not every class is the same; to assume otherwise would not
only be unfortunate for us as teachers, but for the class as well.
Reed, Shannon. “Twitter Me This: New Technology in the
Language Arts Classroom.” Thinkmap
Visual Thesaurus. Thinkmap, Inc., 1998-2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
I found this post to be very interesting; it’s not every day that you hear about a teacher incorporating social media into their lesson plans, but it seems as though it is becoming more and more common. It is common, though, for teachers to have students who feel as though the lessons are dull or uninteresting, so this teacher took a chance and had her students use what they know – tweeting, instant messaging – and have them write up a two-page modernized version of the text. Not only does this have students writing, it has them thinking about the contrast in language between the two time periods. As future teachers, we should take what this teacher had done, and take under consideration the students and their opinions.
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