April 15 2010

Approximately 2.5 Hour Class Plan

Housekeeping:

(Suggested: 10 -15 minutes)

1)      Our group presentations will take place two weeks from tonight (April 29)

• Status reports from the groups: Where are you, what have you accomplished so far?

• We also need to be thinking about our final papers. Let’s get out our one page summations. We will go around and share them with each other.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

2)      Opening Activity for the final night on The Handmaid’s Tale. (Suggested: 5-10 minutes)

• Let’s just take a few moments to generally discuss our experience of the text

3)      Let’s begin with a reflective journal entry on the following topic: (Suggested: 10 minutes)

• Now that you have completed the reading, we can begin a “global” investigation of the text.

• This begins with a reflection on those portions of the text we found to be the most interesting and/or intriguing in tonight’s reading. What are those portions for you? Why do think they have caught and/or frustrated your attention?

4)      Group Discussion: (Suggested: 10 Minutes)

• Share your findings and observations, and then come up with a statement that relates to the following question:

• What happened to Offred? What “really” happened, here?  What is the value of her story, if there is a value?

5)      Class Discussion (Suggested: 10 minutes)

Break

Mini-Lecture: (Suggested: 10-15 Minutes)

• One of the ways the “bastards” will try to “grind you down” is by “giving you a history.” You are taught from a very young age that you are the product of a specific series of events. Now, while it would be crazy to say that all of our concepts of “history” are necessarily wrong, what we need to be aware of is the fact that our histories are constructed, and usually linear — i.e., one thing lead to another and another and another…

• We tend to accept the histories of things that escape our general experience or knowledge out of basic necessity. You believe, probably, that your town or state or nation has “a” history, even though you may not be all that familiar with it.  One question this books gets us to ask is, “Why?” “Well, you may said – there must be?”

No — Why?

• The answer is obvious: without a history, nothing would be where it is, right? Well – maybe – but why do you insist on their being “a” history?

Why couldn’t there be histories?

• And if there are possible histories for your state or your nation, then why couldn’t there be histories for you?

• We tend to talk about the “different times” in our lives or “phases” in our lives where we lived in some way so that we were doing things or with people we are no longer with.

• These collective experiences make up our “history.” It’s a logical – but also very strange way to look at your life – because it suggests you, right now, in this chair have been lead here by a definite and particular chain of events.

• Really?

• Isn’t it equally possible that you are here in this chair right now because of the history youhave chosen to believe about yourself?

Uh-oh.

• One reason literature, like life, is valuable because it is _mutable_ that is, it’s meaning can change with reflection. You understand your history differently at different point in your life, and you understand literature differently at different points in your life.

Journal work (Suggested: 10 -15 Minutes)

• Let’s create three different time lines for ourselves, all of which end with you here – each will have ten items in it.  Besides the last item – your presence here – each entry must be entirely different than the other two.

Group Work: (Suggested: 5-10 minutes)

• Share time lines and talk about significant differences between them.

• Okay, now here’s an even more important question… how many of thoes evets are you certain about? How many are probably at least partly fictional as your remember them?

Class Discussion of findings: Suggested: (5-10 minutes)

With all this in mind, let’s turn to the reading for today:

Analysis:

• Now that we’ve had our general discussion about the reading, we can move into more specific forms of inquiry. Let’s begin with our analysis of the content:

Analysis:

Group Work: (Suggested: 10-15 Minutes)

• Break the reading down into its major characters and events. Next construct a time line for this information. Put it up on the board when you are ready. Mark analepses when and where you find them.

Class Discussion of analysis: (Suggested: 10 minutes)

Evaluation:

Journal Entry: (Suggested: 10 minutes)

How much, or how little of the novel’s revolutionary message do you agree with? Begin by identifying the message as you understand it

Group Discussion: (5-10 minutes)

Class Discussion : (5-10 minutes)

Life of Pi — our final text.

Begin Life of PI — Read through the first 45 chapters (they are short).

Advertisement