SCET Journal 2020

Broadening Diverse Perspectives

their family or home. Their culture will be validated through this writing assignment. Students will be encouraged to share their vignette with the students in the class in order for their classmates to form respect for other cultures. I will assess students’ learning during the lesson through class discussions about each individual vignette we study. I want students to fully understand what they are reading before I have them compose their own writing. It is imperative they feel comfortable with a writing style they have never used prior to composing their own vignette. I will assess their learning after the activity by grading their vignette, keeping in mind the characteristics of a vignette. I enjoy creating content that addresses issues we see in young adult novels today. In this unit, I want- ed students to discover that Percy Jackson includes diverse characters, adolescents with challenges. My overall goal for these lessons is to have students com- pare the characters of other novels or media with this book. My personal goal is to have students use critical literacy skills by learning how to question and note when a text is not diverse. The first lesson asks students to think about the main character, Percy, and to identify his character traits. Students will be encouraged to use graphic or- ganizers to analyze the character traits. Then, through a writer’s workshop, students will be asked to write a narrative about a similar character who lives in today’s world. Students will have to consider how their char- acter would act today and what might influence his/ her actions. Students will write a book review in a second les- son. I want students to become critical of any book they decide to read. Writing a review is an important skill for young adults. Students will analyze Percy Jackson for its diverse qualities or lack thereof. I will model for my students how to analyze a book. Stu- dents will also learn how a book can include diverse elements. Students will question whether or not Percy Jackson represents a large portion of its readers or just a select few. I want students to review books for diversity for the rest of the year. The third lesson is a gender study which prompts students to consider how their own gender is repre- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

sented in the novel. Since the last presidential elec- tion, I have noticed the difference between how men and women are portrayed, especially in the media. I want students to form opinions about how men and women are represented, in the past and present. I do not want to tell them how to think, but my goal is to have students discover that women’s roles are often portrayed as traditional whereas men are less so. I want students to discover that men and women are not equally represented in media. Finally, students will create a Fakebook page for a demigod they create based on what they know about Greek mythology. Fakebook is an online classroom tool where students can create fake facebook pages for characters of their choice. The twist to this is the characters they create must have diverse qualities. For example, my demigod would use her anxiety to defeat everything that got in her way. Just as Percy Jackson used his “weakness,” I want students to turn their challenges into superpowers. Without technology, many of my lessons would not be as effective, and I want students to use Google effectively. Students will be allowed to use their smart phones and other devices for research. The gender study and Fakebook page are two technology-de- pendent lessons. Students are very familiar with so- cial media so I want to build on those skills. I always want to use technology in my class to help facilitate learning. Conclusion When we began to choose books and create units, our goal was to find opportunities for our students from diverse backgrounds to see themselves in the novels they read and to learn more about others who have had different experiences. Through the process of putting together the lessons, Katie and Kristina real- ized they could also provide opportunities for their stu- dents to practice critical literacy skills. Students don’t merely develop their writing skills through these les- sons by learning how to write a vignette or by devel- oping well-rounded characters. The lessons in these units also ask students to consider relevant topics to today’s world, such as considering the experiences of marginalized communities and gender issues. Our new goal is that these lessons inspire teachers to find other ways to use literature as inspiration to explore topics that are engaging and relevant to today’s students.

South Carolina English Teacher

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