Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Creative Writing Pedagogy: Building Curriculum For High School Students, Elizabeth Lengel

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis serves as a rationale for the creative writing pedagogy I use and how it serves my high school creative writing class. As my school district made the decision to overhaul our English curriculum, the English department decided to add Creative Writing as an English class elective.

The work for planning these new classes was spread around the English Department, and I was assigned to design the curriculum for the new Creative Writing class. Designing an entire class from scratch leaves a lot of room for creativity and innovation. However, as excited for this new course as I was, …

Unit Plan For A Course On Banned Books For 11th And 12th Grade, Jonny Gherman

English Capstone Projects

This lesson plan will teach high school students (11th-12th grade) what censorship is, why it is powerful, and what to do with it. Aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards, students will identify common themes between the two most popular genres of banned books (race & gender/sexuality). Through a series of activities, discussions, and a final project, students will practice close reading, critical thinking, and basic research skills.

To Read Or Not To Read: Navigating Young Adult Literature In The Classroom In The Age Of Trigger Warnings And Banned Books, Ashley Sell

Honors Projects

Most public school libraries or English classrooms celebrate Banned Books Week during the school year, featuring dozens of Young Adult novels that have been challenged or banned in public schools across the country. However, books aimed towards young readers are typically not optimized for educational use in the classroom. In this project, I will explore the benefits of using Young Adult literature in the classroom, while also investigating the obstacles that one might face in order to do so, i.e. censorship, sensitive subject matter. I also want to summarize and respond to an argument for the retainment of classic literature …

Mental Illness In Young Adult Literature: A Classroom Approach, Claire Ghent

Honors College Theses

As high school curriculum in the 21st century evolves, the need to increase exposure of diverse literature that reflects culture, gender, and ethnicity is growing. One crucial area often overlooked by educators, parents, and publishers is literature that provides attention to mental illness, in spite of the growing amount of adolescents who suffer from a mental illness. By increasing awareness of mental illness in the classrooms, teachers can reduce stigma and increase empathy in their students while still providing challenging and engaging literary interactions. One of the best vehicles to deliver mental illness and stigma education is young adult literature …

The Use Of Diverse Young Adult Literature In High School Classrooms, Lauren Mohler

Student Scholarship – English

This departmental honors project outlined research that has been completed on the benefits of incorporating young adult literature in the secondary English Language Arts classroom and discussed the benefits of using young adult literature as a means of introducing students to various aspects of diversity. While young adult literature continues to grow in popularity among teen readers, there are many negative connotations associated with texts falling under this label and their merit within the classroom. Similarly, classroom dynamics are becoming more diverse each year through the number of students representing different races, ethnicities, ability levels, interests, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and …

Data Diving Into “Noticing Poetry”: An Analysis Of Student Engagement With The “I Notice” Method, Scot Slaby, Jordan Benedict

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This paper explores students’ engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the “I Notice” methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets’ unit plan, “Noticing Poetry” (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over the course of a month from January 9 through January 30, 2018 and involved five classes of one hundred general English tenth grade students across three teachers’ classrooms at Shanghai American School’s Puxi High School Campus. Data indicates that the “I Notice” method and the “Noticing Poetry” unit and its …

Fairy Tales And Adaptations: A Unit Of Study For High School Seniors, Angelica P. Babauta

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project is a unit of study designed for high school seniors in an advanced English class. The topic is fairy tales and adaptations, and through these twelve complete lesson plans, students will be led to examine the way fairy tales and society influence one another based on how a classic fairy tale is adapted over time. Students will study Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast," the Brothers Grimm's "Brier Rose," and Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" as the original fairy tales. The adaptations paired with these texts are Alex Flinn's Beastly, James Finn Gardner's "Sleeping …

Red-Marked Writing: High-Stakes Consequences On High School Writing Education, Dana Sarchet

Senior Honors Theses

The crucial role of writing in students’ educational growth and development is indisputable. Not only does the process of writing engage students in each level of Bloom’s taxonomy, but it also aids students in the development of their cognitive thinking skills. However, past and even recent statistics reveal a common trend: the vast majority of high school students lack even a basic understanding of writing. Though undoubtedly there are many issues contributing in this lapse of students’ writing abilities, high-stakes testing is a key factor in the decline of writing education in high school classrooms. In order for students to …

Theme For English A, B And E: An Anthology Of Identity In Cape Town, South Africa, Noelle Elizabeth Rose

Honors Scholar Theses

This collection of poetry from grade 11 students in Cape Town, South Africa seeks to explore self-identity in South African high school students. In reading through their personal work, one can identify four ways in which these students define themselves: using self-promotion, or a display of personal strength; self-doubt, or moments of vulnerability; self-exploration, or the literary journey students take to define and explore their lives; and self-definition through social issues, or the examining of important social issues in South Africa and how they play into the lives of students. This anthology and literary analysis explores life-defining issues that are …

Comics, The Canon, And The Classroom, James Carter

James B Carter

This chapter, which explores what I call the canon-curriculum-culture connection in terms of comics and graphic novels, also offers definitions of the augmental and supplemental approaches to using graphic novels in the classroom. The link is to the "Google Books" version of the paper, which begins on page 47 of the book.

Carving A Niche: Graphic Novels In The English Language Arts Classroom, James Carter

James B Carter

An introduction to the roles that graphic novels can play in the secondary English Language Arts classroom.