One
aspect of this article that I found particularly useful was the concept of
using more modern material (such as films, books, or music) to create a bridge
of understanding back to older texts (such as anything written more than a
hundred years ago). I thought this idea of the authors’ was quite ingenious
because it allowed students to not only gain a better understanding of modern
material, but also to use that deeper understanding to root out and analyze
aspects of more traditional literature. In particular, I thought that the poem
paring activity the authors performed was a good way to foster more student
interest and to delve deeper into classic pieces without the class finding such
activities dull. For example, from my own time in high school, I know that when
we read The Scarlet Letter, most of my peers and I did not truly pay attention
to it because it was written in a drier tone and didn’t appear to have any
great amount of relevance to today. Perhaps if our teacher had taken a
different approach, student engagement would have risen.
Another
part of the article that drew my attention was when the authors pointed out the
amount of student participation when they viewed A Time to Kill. I thought that
their teaching strategy for that unit allowed them to really get the students
involved and to explore a greater degree of topics than a drier lesson would
have allowed them to. The authors indicated that “more contemporary films…have
a greater chance of being perceived as relevant” (195). This was a great
observation because, in all honesty, it seems that a great deal of people (not
just students) discard older material as being outdated and not related to
current issues; therefore, it would seem to using newer material as well as
less contemporary pieces would be the best way to illustrate the similarities (and
differences) between current and past situations or predicaments.
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