Saturday, September 22, 2007
Writers Block
So I'm creating a lesson plan that I have to teach to my Thursday night class. It has to be a direct-instruction lesson (basically, a lecture), and I have complete writer's block right now. It has to be focused on my content area obviously, which is high school English, and while I have lots of ideas, I can't seem to focus on any one idea. And the "microteach" as my professor is calling it can only be 15 minutes long! I can't teach anything significant in 15 minutes! How can I teach any sort of literature, poetry, or even a grammar lesson in just 15 minutes?!?! My favorite idea so far is to do an introduction to Romanticism, in which I'll use Power Point and basically just lecture. I'm thinking of pointing out the similarities, or rather, having the students point out the similarities between Romantic art and Romantic literature. But I can't focus on a novel or any long piece, so I'll have to stick with poetry. Maybe Wordsworth. He's the epitome of Romanticism. So then I can show one of his poems, read it, and pair it with a Romantic painting. Then I can discuss the characteristics of Romanticism, give the time period and a brief summary of what was happening in the world during that time, and then relate all that back to the painting. My thoughts are just all jumbled. Then I was thinking that I could just do a lesson on grammar, maybe discussing the difference between the five sentence structures, or maybe the difference between gerunds and participial phrases. That could fit into the 15 minute time limit, but that's pretty damn boring! And then I was thinking about teaching how to effectively add description in creative writing, but that would require less lecturing, and more activity-type stuff. I have no freaking clue what I'm doing. This thing has to be complete and ready to teach by Thursday, and I'm getting kinda worried....
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