Archive for September, 2007
Blog #2- Week 5
When thinking about teaching the novel The Giver to students in a classroom of my own, I found that I could go in many directions due the novel’s plot and characters. I chose to place major emphasis on the structure of the community, and how everything is under strict control. For my lesson plan, I want my students to focus on the idea of having no war, fear, or pain within a community, but at the same time having no freedom of choice. Everyone has a place in society, but they do not get to chose it. I want my students to delve deep into that idea and think about if that would be a good or bad idea to enforce within a group of people. Students will need to think about whether or not it would it possible to do, and would they personally benefit from it.
In looking for lesson plans to give me useful ideas, I came across a pre-reading activity where I would have my students create their own “perfect” community, in which they would “give it a name, a system of government, a physical description, and an account of how its people spend their days,” (http://www.theliterarylink.com/giver_lessons.html). The class would have a discussion on how their community would develop and constantly make changes over time. Each student would decide what roles history and memories of painful events would play in the growth of their community. They would also have to think about what would have to be added to our own society in order to make it perfect and if anything that we value or take for granted would have to be sacrificed. As reading of the novel progresses, I would discuss with my students how the communities they made compare to the community in The Giver. I would ask students to look at the similarities and differences, and at which community they think would have the most success in real life.
For a Language Arts interdisciplinary connection, I found a lesson plan idea that would discuss with my students the ambiguous ending of the novel from the informative website of http://www.theliterarylink.com/giver_lessons.html. Students would understand that the ending of The Giver can be interpreted in two different ways; either Jonas is remembering his Christmas memory as he and Gabriel fall into a coma in the snow or that Jonas really does hear music and see the warm house where people are waiting to greet him. I thought the lesson plan I found had a thought-provoking writing lesson for my students to do, “After discussing the role of ambiguity in writing, have students craft short stories that end on an ambiguous note. Discuss some in class, noting the writers’ clues for such an ending,” http://www.theliterarylink.com/giver_lessons.html.
Through the same website, I also found an interdisciplinary connection with science to The Giver. It refers to the part in the book where Jonas throws an apple back and forth and notices it changes in an uncommon way. It marks the beginning of his ability to see color, specifically the color red. Based on that part of the text, I would “divide the class into groups and have them research and report on the following subjects: the nature of color and of the spectrum, how the human eye perceives color, what causes color blindness, what causes the body to react to any stimulus. Is it possible to train the human eye so that it does not perceive color?” (http://www.theliterarylink.com/giver_lessons.html).
2 comments September 26, 2007
Blog # 1: Week 4
People living in society today have the freedom to make personal choices within their daily lives, whether it may be what stuffed animals they like to play with as a child or what career they will pursue as an adult. Choices are constantly being made by people, which reflects their individuality and the amount of varying personalities and interests shared within a community.
In understanding how the world works, the community within the novel The Giver is portrayed as completely opposite from how people currently function in society today. As I read the novel, I began to come to the conclusion that the community within this book does not allow many of the freedoms that people in society today take for granted. In The Giver, mothers are not allowed to raise their own biological children. Families must apply for a child, and there can only be one boy and one girl living within a household. Rules are constantly enforced through the loudspeaker in the community, and children receive their “assignments” (jobs) at the age of twelve. I am well aware that in the real world, things do not happen this way. By knowing the world around me my responses to the text result in obvious confusion, yet a strong fascination to better understand the somewhat abnormal community. It intrigues me on how people can be run in such a manner, and how they do not understand the situation they are in or ways to change it. It frustrates me that each person is not able to choose for themselves what they want to do with their life, and that they are subjected to various ceremonies in order to “move-up” in life.
As the world progresses in society today, people are continually gaining more freedoms, essentially making the world a place to express oneself in any way desired. By fully comprehending this notion, I feel the community in The Giver needs to make some drastic changes and improvements.
2 comments September 21, 2007
Blog Entry 1: Week 3
In my opinion, James Joyce’s “Araby” is a bildungsroman, a story about a young character’s growth into maturity. By examining the text using a formalist approach, I was able to uncover this thought due to Joyce’s use of diction. It is evident through diction that the young boy begins the story having an innocent mind as most youths do, “The cold air stung us and we played till out bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street,” p. 230. He begins the story as a young boy who is smitten by his friend’s sister, and promises to bring her something back from the bazaar. This shows how naive and innocent he is about his childhood dreams. As the story progresses, I was able to see that due to his infatuation with the female, he began to lose interest in his former daily tasks of a young child. “I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play. It marked the beginning steps of his maturation process. When the boy travels alone on the third class carriage to the bazaar and sees the dark, lifeless stalls, reality began to set in. He realized that he was driven by what was only important to him, and became extremely upset with himself. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity: and my eyes burned with anguish and anger,” p. 233. His once pure beliefs of the world turned into frustration and a heavy feeling of emptiness. He worked hard to finally get to the bazaar, and once he arrived, his expectations were not met. His innocence transformed into recognition of a man’s struggle for happiness in a dark, lonely world.
Add comment September 14, 2007
The Good Life
Martin Seligman, Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at UPenn, has been the President of the American Psychological Association since 1996. His believes that both clinical and social psychology have the ability to decrease large amounts of suffering in the world, and wonders if psychologists can truly make people happier with their lives. Seligan reflects the ideas of Aristotle, and believes that happiness comes from good conversations and taking time to reflect on life. He feels it is about understanding personal strengths and being able to constantly improve upon them as shown in the following quote:
“The good life consists of the roots that lead to flow. It consists of first knowing what your signature strengths are and then recrafting your life to use them more — recrafting your work, your romance, your friendships, your leisure, and your parenting to deploy the things you’re best at. What you get out of that is not the propensity to giggle a lot; what you get is flow, and the more you deploy your highest strengths the more flow you get in life.”
Seligman clearly expresses his feelings towards acheiving the good life, and that in order to have it there must be flow. His ideas state that a person must become fully aware of what their strengths are and then begin to immediately use them as often as possible. In doing so, it will improve relationships with others, activities or hobbies, and also in the work place. Although laughing frequently may make a person happy for short periods of time, creating flow through mastering personal strengths will lead to the desirable good life.
Add comment September 7, 2007
iphone-Phone = iPod Touch
Many people today are extremely fascinated with Apple’s continuous production of new products. This blog explains the recent release of the latest iPod, the iPod Touch, which has a touch screen with wifi that allows for its users to browse the web. The author states he is intrigued by various posts about the iPod Touch, and how certain bloggers are interested in the new features it entails, whereas others are soley focused on the iPod’s cost. The author likes the fact that blogging allows for media sources to focus on one aspect of the iPod in a single blog, and people can therefore read both factual information and opinions from different sources.
Add comment September 7, 2007
