Monday, April 4, 2011
NCTE Series Response # 2
As the book progresses, we find that each chapter can be used to guide us through teaching JLC through various means. Chapter 4 centers around meeting the challenges of teaching JLC. One writing prompt asks students to complete a well-developed essay on the conflict-filled connection between three mothers and their daughters. Although the prompt has students examining one of the major themes of the novel, how can we shape this question so that it also involves the personal experiences of the student? How does this help or hinder the reading of the novel? Would you change the prompt or keep it as is? Why or why not?
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First of all, I think that keeping track of the stories and relationships in JLC can be challenging enough, especially if students will be reading the story little by little each day. I feel that a more appropriate assignment might be to pick one mother-daughter relationship and pick as many conflicts as you feel necessary between them to expand on. After, it would be interesting to have the student write about their relationship with their mother, father, or caregiver (considering not all of the students will be female or have a mother and father) and compare their conflicts and issues to the pair they found they could relate to the most. Asking students to reflect on major themes of the novel and how those themes played a part in one of the mother and daughter’s relationship, and then reflecting on how the student’s relationship with their mother/father/whoever ties in, could be a way for them to express they:
ReplyDelete1. Understand the main concepts of the book.
2. Have read and understand at least one mother-daughter relationship in the story.
3. Can reflect and apply themes from the book and relationships to their own lives.
Randi, I like your idea of having the students focus in one of the mother-daughter relationships and then have the students write about a close relationship with someone who is in the position of mother/father/caregiver and see how the two connect. I just wonder if we can go any deeper then this. I think the child/parent relationships are important part of the book but what else do these relationships mean?
ReplyDeleteLike how has the closeness of that specific relationship that the student describes affect how they are living their life?
What has changed because of that relationship?
We talked in our group about human connections as being a theme, how are the characters connected? I think it is important to consider the daughters and how they relate and conflict with each other. They are friends because their parents were friends, maybe there cold be more exploration with that idea?
I think all the students have had a close relationship with someone older in whom they can write about that relationship but I think we need to more closely examine what makes that relationship special? How does that affect each party involved? How did it begin? How did it end? These relationships in the book are all very similar and yet there is something uniquely different about each, I think we need to get at the deeper meaning of these relationships.