Critical reflection and self-assessment

Coherence? Coherent is my middle name! (It's actually Aileen.) Since my mission in life and in teaching is to explore and share the interconnectedness of all things, I most certainly have made the successful effort to align the parts of my learning plan. The lesson asks students to focus on one particular work of literature as a window into understanding so much more.  Students are asked to look at The Joy Luck Club in context.  And that's really the key.  When students are asked to read books just for the sake of covering the curriculum, write essays just because we have to do five of them per marking period, and put together PowerPoints just so we can say we're employing technology in our classroom, they are turned off.  They are disconnected from the literature.  

That's why it's so important for me, as a teacher, to show students that literature is a reflection of life, of the human experience. In our unit we read the text but we do so with a mind to how the character's experiences are like ours or how they are instructive. This does not mean to suggest that literature is a mirror. I don't want students to expect just to see reflections of themselves. I want them to find connections - a very different thing indeed. 

In our unit students are challenged to make these sophisticated connections. Instruction is scaffolded so that they can achieve the goals.  Students first come to understand narrative by looking at who is telling the story. We discuss the author's purposes and process. Then they are asked to engage in similar investigative and creative processes themselves.  What the students are asked to produce reflects their transfer. It's not enough just to know that Amy Tan did something or even how she did it. Students are asked to do it themselves. They search for the personal stories within themselves and in their own families.

The final result is something that Melissa and I can be truly proud of. We've taking the backward UbD model and have created a unit plan that I know I will actually use this coming fall. Although I know this is something that I've been doing as a teacher for years, this process has forced me to articulate the congruence between produce, process and expectations.