YA in room 1.257
In my classroom, our work with YA lit is two fold. Students work independently and often in pairs to do the traditional work of analyzing how an author accomplishes literary tasks such as characterization, conflict, and theme while also working in literature circles and as whole class to examine the experiences of others, how those experiences shift their own perspectives, and what if anything they are to do about it.
The first unit I teach to my ninth graders is a a coming of age/social justice unit that uses young adult texts to show my students ways of knowing and being in the world that they have never been exposed to while simultaneously using accessible and high interest texts to scaffold students toward analytical reading and writing found in traditional ELA classrooms. Funds willing, I change the books out each year, but this past year the choices were: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely, How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon, Dime by E.R Frank, and Simon Vs. The Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. The students self group themselves by their book choices, and as they read they are asked to identify the main social issue that their book tackles. The answers they came up with are mental health, racism/police brutality, racism/vigilantes, sexual abuse/homelessness/poverty, and LGBTQ issues/bullying.
Each week students are asked to complete an analytical journal that focuses on an assigned literary element. I model this early in the week with a common YA text (some of my favorite pieces to use are excerpts from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, excerpts from The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, "Oranges" by Gary Soto, "Always Running" and "Race Politics" by Luis Rodriguez to name a few). Then throughout the week students are given SSR, writing workshop, and independent writing time in order to complete these tasks.
Fortunately, I teach on a block schedule that allows me to give students space for these traditional tasks while also making space for student discussion. My primary goal in introducing students to these texts is to foster empathy. Each week the focus is on two of the literature circle groups and their respective book topic. They are both asked to share out about their books, and I also supply all students with nonfiction articles discussing the issues that the two featured books cover. The culminating final project gives students a choice between developing a presentation that would help to educate people, who have not read their book, on their topic OR to develop a program plan for a community or school organization that would help students in the community facing these same problems.
Beuhler (2016) mentions rejecting the binary thought of the traditional English classroom and the workshop style classroom, and claims that subscribing to one wholly is doing a disservice to students. With my students, I try to reject binary thought at all times, and I think my first unit does a good job of this on several levels. I have successfully used YA lit as a hook and a scaffold to get students ready for the texts to come, but after this I teach a film unit that focuses on the cinematic style of Tim Burton and we sample Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Romeo and Juliet (all of which I'm required to teach). My department plans collaboratively, and it is usually more of a blessing than a curse, but I negotiated the space for this unit when I began working there, and garnered the support of my department head, who doesn't love YA, but feels very strongly about social justice. I think my biggest challenge moving forward is having those difficult conversations with my colleagues about the value of YA texts in the high school classroom, and working it in, even in small doses, throughout my remaining units.
The first unit I teach to my ninth graders is a a coming of age/social justice unit that uses young adult texts to show my students ways of knowing and being in the world that they have never been exposed to while simultaneously using accessible and high interest texts to scaffold students toward analytical reading and writing found in traditional ELA classrooms. Funds willing, I change the books out each year, but this past year the choices were: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely, How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon, Dime by E.R Frank, and Simon Vs. The Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. The students self group themselves by their book choices, and as they read they are asked to identify the main social issue that their book tackles. The answers they came up with are mental health, racism/police brutality, racism/vigilantes, sexual abuse/homelessness/poverty, and LGBTQ issues/bullying.
Each week students are asked to complete an analytical journal that focuses on an assigned literary element. I model this early in the week with a common YA text (some of my favorite pieces to use are excerpts from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, excerpts from The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, "Oranges" by Gary Soto, "Always Running" and "Race Politics" by Luis Rodriguez to name a few). Then throughout the week students are given SSR, writing workshop, and independent writing time in order to complete these tasks.
Fortunately, I teach on a block schedule that allows me to give students space for these traditional tasks while also making space for student discussion. My primary goal in introducing students to these texts is to foster empathy. Each week the focus is on two of the literature circle groups and their respective book topic. They are both asked to share out about their books, and I also supply all students with nonfiction articles discussing the issues that the two featured books cover. The culminating final project gives students a choice between developing a presentation that would help to educate people, who have not read their book, on their topic OR to develop a program plan for a community or school organization that would help students in the community facing these same problems.
Beuhler (2016) mentions rejecting the binary thought of the traditional English classroom and the workshop style classroom, and claims that subscribing to one wholly is doing a disservice to students. With my students, I try to reject binary thought at all times, and I think my first unit does a good job of this on several levels. I have successfully used YA lit as a hook and a scaffold to get students ready for the texts to come, but after this I teach a film unit that focuses on the cinematic style of Tim Burton and we sample Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Romeo and Juliet (all of which I'm required to teach). My department plans collaboratively, and it is usually more of a blessing than a curse, but I negotiated the space for this unit when I began working there, and garnered the support of my department head, who doesn't love YA, but feels very strongly about social justice. I think my biggest challenge moving forward is having those difficult conversations with my colleagues about the value of YA texts in the high school classroom, and working it in, even in small doses, throughout my remaining units.
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