Relevance
To effectively learn anything, the learning “content” in question must seem relevant to the learner. This is one of the most basic fundamentals of teaching. As an English teacher, the part of my job that is particularly difficult is in making what I'm teaching important in the eyes of students. Or, framed differently, it's sometimes difficult to make my students aware of why and how important what I'm teaching them is. When teaching Shakespeare, for example, many students struggle to understand
When reading Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey or Elie Wiesel’s novella Night, students must be encouraged to look beyond what we can see immediately in front of us – that these are stories of a national hero returning home during the Trojan War and the struggles of a Holocaust survivor. Instead, students need to be made to see real-life comparisons between these acclaimed works and our very own lives. They need to be taught to view Odysseus’ journey as a story of a human being – yes, even a teenager – struggling to reach his or her home, a symbol of contentment and joy. Perhaps, it is the story of a lost person – maybe an adolescent – struggling to find his or her way in life. And maybe Night is the story of indomitable will and determination to overcome any obstacle that stands in someone’s way.
One way we can encourage students to do this in the English/language arts classroom is to integrate more texts with which students can identify (i.e., young adult literature, popular film, music, etc.)
When reading Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey or Elie Wiesel’s novella Night, students must be encouraged to look beyond what we can see immediately in front of us – that these are stories of a national hero returning home during the Trojan War and the struggles of a Holocaust survivor. Instead, students need to be made to see real-life comparisons between these acclaimed works and our very own lives. They need to be taught to view Odysseus’ journey as a story of a human being – yes, even a teenager – struggling to reach his or her home, a symbol of contentment and joy. Perhaps, it is the story of a lost person – maybe an adolescent – struggling to find his or her way in life. And maybe Night is the story of indomitable will and determination to overcome any obstacle that stands in someone’s way.
One way we can encourage students to do this in the English/language arts classroom is to integrate more texts with which students can identify (i.e., young adult literature, popular film, music, etc.)
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Arguments in Music | |
File Size: | 126 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Lyric Analysis Assignment | |
File Size: | 29 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Song Analysis (TEWWG) | |
File Size: | 45 kb |
File Type: | docx |