kkoski

Kate Koski
Unit Plan Diving into the Wreck

Class Specification--
I have specialized this unit to include mainly White and Anishanabe literature because these are the majority of people living in Northeastern Minnesota. The students I had in mind were of mixed race but primarily White and Anishanabe and of varying socio-economic backgrounds. I think this model is needed in the school systems in this area because not much is done with curriculum to incorporate American Indian voices. This is important based on the population of Anishanabe people in Duluth and the surrounding areas. The unit is geared toward high school seniors looking to go to college who have experience reading complex texts and developing insightful ideas which they are able to articulate to the class. The unit also necessitates a strong writing background because students will be doing a lot of journaling and a long paper. If students have not mastered these skills in lower classes, they will have difficulty performing all the tasks the unit asks of them. This unit would not be appropriate in a strongly Christian community or even a conservative school because some of the material may be offensive to some parents. Some of the issues that come up in class are meant to challenge students current ways of seeing the world a teacher using this material needs to be careful not to alienate any students or their parents. When devising this unit I assumed a “liberal” community and a school with strong teacher support.

Significant Assumptions
When I began this unit, I used Gere’s Language as Social Construct article as my model. Using the Interpreting Perspectives Minnesota High Standard my goal was to empower students to think for themselves. I hope to do this by enabling students to distance themselves from their cultural metaphors so that they are able to think about a work of literature recognizing their bias, the authors bias, and how the world of the author and the reader affect interpretation of the text. The texts for this unit are from varying perspectives and time periods but they are all tied together under the theme of prevalent cultural metaphors dealing with women and how through time they gain archetypal status. I include many texts from the cannon but also new voices that talk to these texts. I feel that it is important that students have some experience with the Greeks, with biblical stories and with Shakespeare because so many authors harken back to these texts. These works with their genius and folly have shaped Western Literature. I also mentioned that I assume that these students are looking for classroom experience that will prepare them for college. Most professors assume familiarity with these texts. I choose Louise Erdrich's book because she deals with Anishanabe Mythology, which I feel, can have interesting and important dialogue with the canonical texts. Again, I want to teach specific texts that would be relevant to my student’s lives. I did not want to leave out American Indian voices in a community with a large Anishanabe population. The perspective that it offers, especially in its dealing with women’s issues, can enable students from both cultures to see how each other’s myths affect their world. Contemporary women poets make up the third category of authors we will study. I choose these authors because they focus on women’s issues and often speak to the myths that they feel haunt their existence. The unit is organized thematically rather than chronologically to avoid learning “burn out.” For instance Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 will be at the beginning of the unit while Macbeth is near the end and read in conjunction with Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind” and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. I believe one of the most important reasons to study literature is to develop the ability to make connections; between the past and present, with one’s culture and others cultures. Literature speaks to our experiences and gives us a framework to understand cultures of the people around us.

Standards-
I used the Minnesota Interpreting Perspectives Graduation Standard in devising this unit. I want my students to understand that there are multiple readings within a piece of literature. I want them to be able to appreciate a work yet also to be adept critics because they are able to evaluate a text in three spheres; the reader, the author, and the world. I want my students to be aware that Western Literature is merely one of many rich literary traditions. The work we do in this class is appropriate to meet the Grad Standard because it brings many “non traditional” voices to the classroom. It will give students the opportunity to uncover the assumptions that they hold because they are a member of a certain culture and study the Mythos of other cultures.

Possible Whole-Class Activities:
     ---Discussion of theme questions in the prefatory statement to be asked of each text.
     ---Respond to questions comparing the manifestations of “woman” in different texts.
     ---Explore cultural assumption students hold.
     ---Work with role playing, give students pieces to act out parts of the texts.
     ---Take field trip to see a play, poetry reading, or a speaker.
     ---Listen to tapes of poets reading their poetry.
    ---Discuss ideas or concerns students have about paper topics.
    ---Read assigned texts aloud.

Possible Small Group Activities:
    ---Discussion of journal entries.
    ---Writing groups for the paper that is due.
    ---Play-acting preparation
    ---Presentation groups to introduce “non-traditional” author to the class.
    ---Discussion of questions from the various texts.
    ---Group presentations: acting and author

Possible Individual Activities:
    ---Reading works by non-cannon authors to find an author for the presentation and to meet the outside reading requires for A and B contract.
    ---Paper about myth and how it affects culture, not a research paper, comparing the literature in the unit or any other relevant texts the student wishes to use.
    ---Assigned responses.
   ---Creative project: poem, myth, letter, song, dialogue, short story or any other genre.
   ---Write a review of the play, speaker, poetry reading.

Ongoing Activities:
I expect a journal of at least three entries per week from every student. I encourage students to use creative license in their journals. I see the journal as a class diary; along with reading and discussion responses, students can include poetry, magazine and newspaper articles, drawings, pictures, personal stories, anything as long as they can somehow relate it to the unit. Journal entries are a great way to sort through ideas for the paper topic. I will only assign a few entries and those will pertain to the opinions or assumption students will be asked to try to step back from. I want to have an entry from the beginning, the middle, and the end of the unit. Then I want students to analyze the three in a final response to see if they feel they have had any paradigm shift.
Organization of the Unit:

Week One: The Angel
The first week designed to introduce students to thinking about myth in terms of its affect on culture. We will begin with the Anticipatory set, read Semele Recycled, the Laurel and Europa myths, and then discuss the thematic questions from the prefatory statement. Students will be asked to think about these questions with every new work they encounter throughout the unit. Students will read Lynda Sexson’s Margaret of the Imperfections. Margaret is an ordinary woman who has a mythic experience as she begins sprouting pearls all over her body. Students will discuss how this story plays with a myth about the Virgin Mary and at the same time celebrates the beauty of sacred stories. Students will read an excerpt from Lynda Sexson’s book Ordinarily Sacred and discuss what makes something, a person, or an event, holy to a group of people. We will talk about the roles women play in these various cultural myths, how they different, how they are the same, and how the students feel these stories work themselves out in the world. To help students begin thinking about these complex questions we will also be reading in class some excerpts from Joseph Campbell’s The Power Of Myth. Campbell compares many mythologies and should help students begin to grapple with these issues. Students will be asked to reflect on their thoughts and feelings about the readings and class discussion so far. This is one of only three assigned journal assignments. At the end of the unit students will be asked if the saw a change in their ideas from the beginning of the unit to the end.

Week Two: Temptress
This week we will be discussing the stereotypes about woman created by the story of Adam and Eve. We will read the section from Milton’s Paradise Lost with Eve and the serpent. We will also read another excerpt from the Power of Myth about Eve and Ann Sexton’s poem “Consorting with Angels”. Students will think about from what perspective each of these works is written. Again, they will be asked to discuss the thematic unit questions and we will discuss as a class and in groups how these works speak to each other. We will talk about archetypes and students will work in small groups to create a myth placing a movie star, a sports star, or any other well known person into a mythic situation. Now that we have looked at two different woman archetypes we will read as a class Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 (My Mistresses eyes are nothing like the Sun.) In groups and then as a class we will talk about how Shakespeare pokes fun at putting women on some mythical pedestal. We will think back to Margaret of the Imperfections and reflect on the ideas talked about in Ordinarily Sacred. Students should find a partner for their presentation on a “non traditional” author to introduce to the class and find another pair to form a writing group with for the long paper.

Week Three: Witches
This week we will be reading sections from Macbeth (the weird sister acts), Ann Sexton’s poem Her Kind and the section of the Odessey where Ulysses encounters Circe. Students will again discuss the unit’s thematic questions concerning these works. We will again ask ourselves how these myths do cultural work in creating stereotypes and work to “peel off” another layer of assumptions that we unconsciously hold. We will spend one day in the writing groups working on the long paper and one-day at the end of the week introducing the novel Tracks. To prepare students to switch gears we will spend time reading some short pieces from American Indian Myths and Legends. I am assuming that I will have some American Indian students so this would also be a time when they could share any stories that they remember hearing growing up. I will ask students to have the first 100 pages of Tracks read by Monday’s class period.

Week Four: We will be discussing Tracks all this week in terms of the unit’s thematic questions and in terms of the “western” cultural metaphors we have been studying. Possible discussion questions for group work or for the class, as a whole would be: What world does Fleur live in? Is she supernatural? How is she like the character Margaret in Margaret of the Imperfections? What examples can you find in the novel that touch the realm talked about in Ordinarily Sacred? How is Fleur a combination of all of “western” mythology stereotypes about women yet somehow able to transcend them? How does this Ojibway worldview treat its women characters? How does western myth treat women in mythology? We will take one day this week for students to work with their author partner. The assignment for over the weekend is to finish Tracks if they have not already.

Week Five: Wrap-up questions the students have about Tracks. We will spend the rest of the week hearing the ten-minute presentations from the author groups and working on the long papers. In class we will read and discuss “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich, this poem provides a nice wrap up to the unit. I will assign another journal entry asking students to reflect on the unit again this will be used in conjunction with the first journal assignment and a final journal in which they will be asked to reflect back on their reflections of the unit. We will do this in class on Monday along with talking about the papers that are due.

Detailed Plans for Three Days of the Unit:

Title: “Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair…”

Objectives: Students will be learning to compare themes in literature. Students will have read excerpts from Macbeth and will have read “Her kind.” Students will discuss in small groups the metaphor of woman as witch.

Methods:
1) I will bring a caldron, various witchy recipe necessities, costume pieces and props to do a short rendition of the weird sisters’ spell casting along with two volunteers. (15 minutes)
2) I will ask volunteers to read aloud “Her Kind.” (5 minutes)”
3) Students will get into groups of three to discuss the poem and the play. Some possible ideas for group discussion could include: What do you think Sexton meant when she wrote, “I have been her kind?” I you are having problems with this question think about the quote “a woman like that is misunderstood.” Or “A woman like that is not a woman, quite;” Do you think the author feels alienated or do you feel that that she is trying to ally herself with someone or something on the outskirts of “normal.” Think about these pieces in terms of your thematic unit questions. (15 minutes)
4) We will spend time discussing the issues discussed in-groups as a class. (10 minutes.)
5) Homework: Read the Circe section of the Odessey. Remind students to keep working on their journals. Tell students that they should begin reading Tracks if they want to get ahead.
Assessment: I know students are learning if they are able to compare the literature and apply it to the unit’s thematic questions. I know students are learning if as I wander around the groups I hear students asking complex questions and grappling with the issues. I know students are learning if I find they are writing quality responses in their journals.

Title: Tracks: the line blurs between myth and reality.

Objectives: I want students to see how myth affects the world they live in. I want to introduce a “non western” set of ideals to the class and by studying the myths of the Ojibway culture work to gain some insights into this cultures world-view. I am assuming that I have some Anishanabe students so I want to bring some literature to the classroom that is relevant to their lives. I want my students to think deeply about their assumptions and by studying each other’s ideas come to understand each others world view.

Rationale: I do not like using the word myth when talking about American Indian sacred stories because it has connotations of being untrue. In my experience, the Myths of American Indian People are inextricably interwoven with their culture. They are not displaced like the myths in white culture. I feel Tracks does an incredible job of portraying how the mythic is real in the minds of Indian People. Fleur Pillager is a changeling; she is both a real life woman with many hardships and a “Windigo” of a spirit realm. She loves a man, and the Lake Manitou. This text should help white students see the strong tie between Indian people and their myths and how even though most people are unaware of their mythologies, the stories are still doing cultural work.

Methods:
1) I will divide the class in half and we will pretend that each side is from two very different cultures that have never interacted the goal is to try to figure out the other group’s customs. (20 minutes) see attached.
2) As a class we will discuss what we have learned from this exersize (10 minutes)
3) We will break up into small groups to discuss the following questions: What did you think of the extended family and community life in Tracks? Think about how this is the same or different from your own family and community? What did you think of the mystical events in Tracks? How is it a different world than the other works we have been reading? Was the blending of two spheres, the supernatural and the “real’ world, distracting or exciting? Think about the incarnations of woman we have been studying in this unit, how does Fluer fit into the stereotypes and how does she transcend them? (20 minutes)
4) Homework: finish reading Tracks. Make sure you are keeping up on your journal entries. Jot down any thoughts or questions you have from today’s class.
Assessment: I know students are learning if are able to see the connections between myth and culture by citing specific examples from their lives. I know students are learning if they are asking complex questions about the reading. I know students are learning if they are able to tell me something that they learned from the foreign culture activity.

Title: “First having read the book of myths…”

Objectives: Read “Diving into the Wreck” as a metaphor for diving into our unconscious assumptions. Have students take this poem and turn it into an extended metaphor; stanza by stanza and relating it to the issues we have been grappling with in the unit.

Rationale: The idea behind this activity is to bring the ideas of the unit together by having the students work at applying the issues we have been discussing to a piece of literature. This may seem complicated but the poem does offer some landmarks such as: “the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck, the thing itself and not the myth.” I will let the students know there is no right or wrong answers. They should use their imaginations and that any connection if it is well thought out will be appreciated.

Methods:
1) I will students to quietly read Diving into the Wreck and then I will ask two volunteers to read it aloud. (10 minutes)
2) I will illustrate how the first two paragraphs relate our unit discussions.(5 minutes)
3) We will break up into groups and students will work on sections of the poem relating it to the issues of the unit. (20 minutes)
4) We will regroup as a class and the groups will talk about how they used the section that they were assigned as a metaphor for our class discussions. (15 minutes)
5) Homework: Work on papers. Compile notes and journal entries and have a rough draft ready to turn in on Monday.

Assessment: I know students are learning if they are able to take the concepts that we have been discussing in class and apply them to the poem Diving into the Wreck. I know students are learning if during my random journal checks I see that their writing reflects that they are thinking about the issues. I know that students are learning if they are able to talk if they talk about how the other texts we have read resonate in Diving into the Wreck.
YOUR SCHOOL -
Performance Package
Minnesota Profile of Learning

Content Standard: Peoples & Cultures-Multiple Perspectives Level: HS
Title of Package/Activity: Women’s Roles in Mythology

Summary Statement of Content Standard: students will analyze works of literature from multiple perspectives. Students will develop an understanding and appreciation for different cultures by reading works of literature from various points of view. We will be looking at the ways that gender, race and socioeconomic backgrounds affect the way that people see the world around them. Submersing themselves in another culture’s literature students will be confronted with the cultural assumptions that they hold by becoming aware of another’s cultural assumptions. Students will reflect on the connections between cultures and the ways in which they are different. Students will peel off unconscious assumptions and evaluate the world around them recognizing multiple points of view.

Description of Student Performances:

Task 1: Students will analyze different genres from multiple perspectives

Task 2: Journal write reflecting on various perspectives voiced in the texts

Task 3: Group work discussing thematic unit questions pertaining to finding various readings of the texts

Task 4: Write a comparison paper discussing different perspectives

FINAL ACHIEVEMENT: Use the following scoring criteria when evaluating student performance.

Scoring Criteria
4 - Performance on this standard achieves and exceeds expectations of high standard work.
3- Performance on this standard meets the expectations of high standard work.
2 - Work on this standard has been completed, but all or part of the student's performance is below
high standard level.
1 - Work on this standard has been completed, but performance is substantially below high standard level.
No package score is recorded until ALL parts of the package have been completed.
PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 1
(Title of Package)

Content Standard: Multiple Perspectives Level: HS

Specific Statement(s) from the Standard:

What students should know:
Students should be able to read and discuss a work of literature from three spheres of knowing : reader, author and world. Students will be able to discuss how these spheres of knowing can be read from multiple perspectives.

What students should do:
Students will be able to take the thematic unit questions noted in the unit prefatory statement and evaluate works from multiple perspectives.

Product(s):
1. A multi-genre journal
2. Student- teacher conferences about writings in journal

Task Description:
Journal write about reflections on readings and various points of view in the text.

Special Notes:
Collected Wisdom
Introduction to Myth
Language and Reflection
The Norton Anthology of Literature By Women
American Indian Myths and Legends
Kalevala CD by Ruth Makenzie
Tapes of poets reading their works.

PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 1
(Title of Package)

FEEDBACK CHECKLIST FOR TASK 1

The purpose of the checklist is to provide feedback to the student about his/her work relative to the content standard. Have the standard available for reference.

Y=Yes
N=Needs Improvement

Student Teacher

   Author’s view point is accurately identified

   Reader’s reflections are developed in the journal
                          Multiple perspectives are discussed in the journal.

Students look in literary journals to find different interpretations of a piece of literature.

Student-teacher conferences expand on journal entries
Selections from literature are clearly cited.

Overall Comments (information about student progress, quality of the work, next steps for teacher and student, needed adjustments in the teaching and learning processes, and problems to be addressed):
PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 2
(Title of Package)

Content Standard: P&C Multiple Perspectives Level: HS

Specific Statement(s) from the Standard:

What students should know:
Students should be able to evaluate a piece of literature from three spheres of knowing: reader, author, world.

What students should do: They should be able to write at least one rough draft comparison paper and revise it to make a final draft.

Product(s):
1. Rough draft (s)
2. Final paper

Task Description:
Write a comparison paper discussing different perspectives in a piece or pieces of literature of the students
choice. They should review their journal entries and develop a rough draft. They should revise the rough draft based on their student-teacher and peer conferencing sessions. They should prepare a final draft.

Special Notes:
Students will be encouraged to turn in as many drafts as they want to write. The teacher should make time for peer conferencing in the classroom.

PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 2
(Title of Package)

FEEDBACK CHECKLIST FOR TASK 2

The purpose of the checklist is to provide feedback to the student about his/her work relative to the content standard. Have the standard available for reference.

Y=Yes
N=Needs Improvement

Student Teacher

Thesis is clearly stated.

Viewpoints of author, reader and world are clearly identified.

Arguments are fully developed

Conclusions about author’s bias are well supported.

Reader’s conclusions are well supported and fit into a world sphere.
Bibliography is accurate and complete and the paper is free of grammatical mistakes.

Content Standard: Level:

Specific Statement(s) from the Standard:

What students should know:

What students should do:

Product(s):

Task Description:

Special Notes:

PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 3
(Title of Package)

FEEDBACK CHECKLIST FOR TASK 3

The purpose of the checklist is to provide feedback to the student about his/her work relative to the content standard. Have the standard available for reference.

Y=Yes
N=Needs Improvement

Student Teacher

Content Standard: Level:

Specific Statement(s) from the Standard:

What students should know:

What students should do:

Product(s):

Task Description:

Special Notes:

PERFORMANCE PACKAGE TASK 4
(Title of Package)

FEEDBACK CHECKLIST FOR TASK 4

The purpose of the checklist is to provide feedback to the student about his/her work relative to the content standard. Have the standard available for reference.

Y=Yes
N=Needs Improvement

Student Teacher