A Secondary English teacher with broad subject-specific expertise and eighteen years experience teaching within networked communities of practice. Aspects of my leadership focus on curriculum development, pedagogy, implementation and assessment practices in AQA/Edexcel GCSE, Cambridge IGCSE and IB MYP and DP.
A Secondary English teacher with broad subject-specific expertise and eighteen years experience teaching within networked communities of practice. Aspects of my leadership focus on curriculum development, pedagogy, implementation and assessment practices in AQA/Edexcel GCSE, Cambridge IGCSE and IB MYP and DP.
I think the most important idea to grasp is the human condition, particularly, from the perspective of Nora who asks:
“Has a woman really not the right to spare her dying father pain, or save her husband’s life?”
At a turning-point in her life, Nora receives no solace from books, religion, the sanctity of family, nor her own conscience – she is unstoppable in seeking freedom and truth.
“I believe that I am first and foremost a human being, like you (Torvald) –or anyway, that I must try to become one… I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer” (p.98).
In studying A Doll’s House, you will analyse and interpret this preoccupation with the institution of marriage and its portrayal through Ibsen’s naturalism.
Narrative structures can be used to show moral and ethical dilemmas, with people’s responses to these revealing aspects of their character and identity.
What do our moral and ethical choices reveal about us?
Many of us have learned to become sensitive to the physical environment but fewer of us are sensitive to the moral and ethical environment. This is the surrounding climate about how to live. You will find out about morals and ethics by reading texts that explore environmental anxieties. You will learn how writers create a moral imperative. Your skills will be focused on analysis and evaluation. You will be expected to identify and apply subject terms correctly. You will have two Summative Assessment Tasks and one Formative Assessment Task in the unit which are written below. Your teacher will use the ‘AREs/End Points’ to assess your learning throughout the unit.
Why are we learning this?
As the French say, the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing. In studying the letter you will reflect on the extent to which people permanently change their views about political and social issues, especially in the face of literally earth-shaking world events. Immediately after the terror murders in Paris in January 2015 at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market Hypercacher, the historian Jeffrey Herf, wrote this in his blog:
“I remember well that in the few months following the 9/11 American intellectual world, especially that if liberals and left-leaning people, was in a state of welcome confusion. The familiar denunciations of American “imperialism” and the habits of sympathy for “national liberation movements” that had emerged in the protest against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s did not fit the realities of September 11, 2002…Sadly, the new thinking did not last long, or rather, it was supplanted by experts who told stories about a ”moderate” Muslim Brotherhood and about the need to avoid inflaming Muslims with public discussions of Islamism. Many decades of investment in the cultural capital of conventional habits of left and right were proving too powerful to overcome.”
The idea that when we read a work of literature we are seeking to find a meaning which lies inside the work seems completely common-sense. Literary texts possess meaning; readers extract that meaning from them. We call the process of extracting meaning from texts reading or interpretation. Despite their apparent obviousness, such ideas have been radically challenged in contemporary literary and cultural theory. Works of literature, after all, are built from systems, codes and traditions established by previous works of literature. The systems, codes and traditions of other art forms and of culture in general are also crucial to the meaning of a work of literature. Texts, whether they be literary or non-literary, are viewed by modern theorists as lacking in any kind of independent meaning. They are what theorists now call intertextual. The act of reading, theorists claim, plunges us into a network of textual relations. To interpret a text, to discover its meaning, or meanings, is to trace those relations. Reading thus becomes a process of reading between texts. Meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations. The text becomes the intertext.
Why are we learning this?
You will learn about the Area of Exploration – Intertextuality. This is not a literary or rhetorical device, but rather a fact about literary texts – the fact that they are all intimately interconnected. This applies to all texts: novels, works of philosophy, newspaper articles, films, songs, paintings, etc. To meet the IB’s assessment criteria, you will practice evaluating and interpreting the connections between texts.
Significantly, The English Patient (1992) is considered as a postmodern novel since the text is manipulated to pass on spread identities of different characters through narrative shifts, intertextuality and mini narratives. In other words, The English Patient is a model of intertextuality. For example, Kipling’s Kim, Herodotus’ Gyges and Candaules Scene, The Last of the Mohicans, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Daphne de Maurer’s Rebecca, and Caravaggio’s painting of David and more.
PowerPoints on the first five chapters. These lessons support the Knowledge Booklet and can be adapted.
The lessons are structured around the IB DP Language and Literature English course - Intertextuality.
A handout with a skills focus:
Skills:
• Rhetorical skills
• Outlining and Transitions
• Introducing quotations/citation and paraphrasing
• Conclusions
Grammar:
• Agreement
Students wrote a letter to Siegfried Sasson from Wilfred Owen after studying Exposure.
I applied a filter to each photograph I took of students’ letters to age them.
I made barbed wire from kitchen foil and cut out poppies for the corners to engage attention.
I wrote up a paragraph about what the unit is about and why students are developing their creative writing.
I began the unit with an introduction to British broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. Students were given a quote from remarkable individuals about the power of the press. They annotated the quote and explored the effects of the language. Then students read each section of a newspaper and completed a table with all of the sections. I cut out the question: Is it true, you are what you read? from the newspapers and added photographs of the observed teaching.
MYP English Language and Literature:
Does love make the world go round?
Connections
Self-expression, style and theme
Identities and Relationships
Beliefs and Values of the Romantic Poets
Glossary
Biographies of poets
Vocabulary for each poem
Examples of Romantic poetry
Reading comprehension questions
Assessment points
Quote explosions
Persuasive communication uses aspects of style for the purpose of expressing personal and cultural ideas, feelings, beliefs and values, which can help challenge or alter other people’s point of view.
Contents:
Glossary:……………………………………………………page 3-4
Reflective writing:………………………………………….page 5-6
Poetry Competition experience:………………………page 7-14
Homework for week 1/2:…………………………………page 15
Formative assessment: Sensory Imagery Test……….page 16
War Poets:………………………………………………page 17-26
Summative assessment: Pastiche poem…………………page 27
Criterion C: Producing text, Criterion D: Use of Language
Spoken word poets…………………………………………page 28
Homework for week 3………………���……………………page 29
National Youth Poet Laureate…………………………….page 30
Summative assessment: written commentary………page 31-34
The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman.
Criterion A: Analysing Criterion B: Organising
Summative assessment: protest poem. Criterion C: Producing text Criterion D: Use of language…………………………page 35
You will develop an appreciation of the text ‘Coraline’ by Neil Gaiman, an understanding of the plot of the text and how the writer uses symbolism, motifs, language and structural devices to craft his story. Furthermore, you will develop your knowledge of the Gothic and Fantasy genres, including the common features both genres utilise.
By developing your core knowledge and an appreciation for this text, you will be provided with the building blocks to help you explore and enjoy other texts within this genre, for example: The Graveyard Book and Good Omens.
You will have three Extended Writing Tasks in the unit which are written below. Your teacher will use the ‘AREs/End Points’ to assess your learning throughout the unit.
Copy of the novel
Biography
Plot overview
Chapter summary tasks
Modelled writing
Year 9
Winter Term
Newspapers
MYP English Language and Literature
Is it true, you are what you read?
Although there have been distinct changes to journalism with the shift to online newspapers, newspapers use layout and content to portray a news story. Newspapers are a powerful means of mass communication and for centuries audiences have turned to them to express and reflect their own point of view, personal beliefs and cultural values.
Personal and cultural expression: Analysis and argument, fields and disciplines
What is the city but the people?
Our perspective of urbanisation has struggled to understand environmental and economic sustainability and its impact on the interconnectedness between humankind.
Orientation in time and space: Migration
Contents Page
What are we learning and why? 3
Vocabulary 4-6
Lesson 1: Explore how Jane Austen structured sentiment about the virtue of the country and the vice of the city in Pride and Prejudice. 7-8
Lesson 2: Explore how Salman Rushdie structures sentiments about the colonial shadows in Midnight’s Children. 9
Lesson 3: Explore how Vikram Seth structures sentiments about the colonial shadows in A Suitable Boy. 10
Lesson 4: Explore how Hanif Kureishi structures sentiments about migration in The Buddha of Suburbia. 11
Lesson 5: Explore how Rachel Cusk structures sentiments about urbanisation in Outline.12-13
Lesson 6: Explore how country-home economies are promoted on social media platforms.14-15
Lesson 7: Explore how country-home economies are promoted on social media platforms.16
Lesson 8: Analyse how writers structure feelings towards country and city in their writing. 17
Lesson 9: Evaluate how attitudes towards migration have change. 18-19
Lesson 10: Evaluate how attitudes towards migration have changed. 20
In this Knowledge Booklet, I’ve focused on meeting the needs of students in my year 8 class - predominantly Korean students. The format of the Knowledge Booklet follows MYP English Language and Literature.
