Day 92- "The is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature." How to Read Like a Professor

I still hate white days, but that will soon change. I met with my blended class today, and they are slated to meet during white days period 1 and black days period 2. We agreed as a class that our meeting day will be black 2, so on white days I will be able to grade my blended work and be available to them for help, but I won't necessarily have a class present. I make no secret about the fact that I planned it this way. We met, went over the syllabus, and since I have to approve all these students, I already know them, so they were free to leave. I could get used to this.

In my other 12b classes, I taught a lesson on the secret codes in literature and movies. I talked about water, meals, flight, trips, Shakespeare, and the Bible and how each can be seen or have influenced many of our Western novels and literature. I wanted to show students that if you know what is going on in a scene then it will give you a much better understanding of what they are reading or seeing. I tend to use movies more than books for this since they aren't well read and the same concepts can be seen in movies as in books. So Tarentino, The Lion King, Frodo, Neo, Gandalf, zombies, Yoda, Superman, Andy Dufrane, Stephen King, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, and Heath Ledger all made appearances in my classes today. This lesson went better than I expected and they were highly engaged in the discussion.

In creative writing, I introduced writing territories to the students and they them start to develop a list of writing territories that they have. They did this on their own, then we discussed them as a class so they could help each other out with ideas of areas they would want to write about. For the second part of class, I had them write a piece called "Where I'm From" or "Who I Am" that they used to describe themselves in a creative, poetic way so I could get to know them better. I told them they had the freedom to do with this as they pleased as this was a creative assignment. I have already heard feedback that many students love this class, and we have really only done one assignment. I share their joy already and this class has quickly become my favorite class.