Skip to main content

THUG, or on literary choices for English B HL


It has always been a challenge to choose a set book for English B HL, as the choice is overwhelming and the factors to be taken into consideration numerous. The perfect fit will be a book that is relevant and relatable, as well as interesting and of literary value- a rare find indeed, and all the adjectives used to describe it  are very subjective and depend on the students' and teachers' taste to a great extent. 

So far with my HL students I have used Lord of the Flies, The Help, the Handmaid's Tale, the Giver, Of Mice and Men, Great Gatsby, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the Room.....Some of them were quite a success, some a bit of a disappointment for a reason-  at a point I realized I just need a change. 

This year I decided to try out something more up-to-date and went for The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I prepared a unit planner with activities that worked well for me and my students, maybe you will find it useful, too?



THUG UNIT PLANNER

1. Content quiz- eg.https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/the-hate-u-give/quiz/

HW- THUG topics hexagonal thinking (based on Hexagonal Thinking- Now Spark Creativity-highly recommended!)


2. Topics discussion- based on hexagonal presentations prepared as HW

HW- a meaningful quote analysis (rubrics based on the wonderful materials from the blog Cult of Pedagogy rubrics)


3. A quote that stuck with me- students individual presentations-2-3 min

HW- creative writing- choose a fragment of the book and ‘rewrite it in text messages’ using a text message conversation generator, for example https://ifaketextmessage.com/)


4. Historical references, cultural background  and real life cases- 3 min presentations after 10 min prep

REFERENCES:

Blm

Black panthers

MLK

Tupac Shakur

The Fresh Prince of Belair

Blue lives matter

All lives mater

Harlem resistance


REAL LIFE CASES:

Eric Graner

Tamir Rice

Philando Castile

George Floyd


HW-plot organizer revision (eg. Freytag's Pyramid)


5. Character analysis- in 4 groups, each group gets 4 characters, then a presentation- ppt, prezi, sway- following the pattern: Character: description, traits, quotes

HW- an interview with a character after 10-20 years- roleplay in pairs, recorded in OneNote, 5 minutes each


6. Code-switching, racism and the film (optional)

- the article THUG- how racism works

- the cost of code-switching Ted talk by Chandra Arthur

HW- preparation for the mock trial


7. Mock trial: officer One Fifteeen- Brian Cruise Jr (based on a sample high school mock trial script like this https://line.17qq.com/articles/uwwwrsahx.html or buy this excellent resource TeachersPayTeachers )

HW- opinion column writing- exam-style task

You have recently read an interesting article on violent protests entitled 'Rioting is never an answer' in a magazine online. 
Prompted by its content, you decide to write an opinion column of 450-600 words to be published in the same magazine, commenting on some claims made by the author, presenting your own views on the subject, and suggesting ideas on how the situation can be improved.

 

If you liked this post, why don't you like Culture of Learning on  Facebook

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SPEECH STATIONS

I have been looking for a way to spice up a bit the class I give in DP1 as introduction to speeches- both oral and written (paper 1). Then it dawned on me- why not get the students move and learn about the structure, language, rhetorical appeals rotating the stations in pairs?  I tried and it worked very well- have a look at   the stations  and the sample answers:) . The class is designed for 5 stations, but there is also an optional one on extra linguistic features- I’ve put them in my google disc as pdfs, but you can also create QR codes for them so that you don’t need to print the activities.  As for the class itself, you can ask students to compete against each other in their pairs, and check their worksheets yourself, or allow them accces to the sample key to encourage self-assessment or peer-assessment.  What needs to be done at the end is a wrap-up session on the text type that speech is- one idea might be ask students to elaborate on the titles of each s...
Post a Comment
Read more

a Canva lesson on 'cancel culture'

  I have recently watched an excellent series entitled 'Douglas is cancelled' (I can really recommend this SkyShowtime production),  and it inspired me to plan a lesson on the phenomenon of 'cancel culture'. I ended up preparing a Canva presentation with links to a New York Post article, together with vocabulary work and open questions, as well as a set of listening comprehension and discussion questions based on a CBSN video exploring the question if cancel culture has gone too far maybe. You can find the presentation  here - a cherry on top is 2 paper 1 mock questions- hope you like it!  (key and lesson ideas in the presentation notes)
Post a Comment
Read more

Bloom’s balls!

​ You might think in a secondary classroom there is no room for such ‚primary school crafts’, which require the actual, not digital (!) cutting and pasting. Wrong! Students of all ages and levels should be encouraged to get creative and use all their senses and body to construct knowledge:) It is useful and fun:)  My students recently applied and practised lower and higher order thinking skills described by Bloom in his taxonomy (LOTs and HOTs).  The ‘Bloom’s Balls they created was a project to wrap up our reading of ‘The Giver’ by Luis Lowry (highly recommended for teenage groups, btw!). The students were given a selection of tasks labelled with the six tiers of Bloom’s taxonomy, and a template with pentagons to cut and paste:) You can find the template below- it is a picture, you might want to manipulate with its size to fit the page:)  Their job was to choose 2 tasks from each category, and complete them on their ‚ball’. The tasks were diverse, with different levels of...
Post a Comment
Read more