Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Huckleberry Finn
I am currently teaching Huckleberry Finn to my 10th graders. They are really struggling with the dialect of the text. I have taken a few days off from the reading so we can make sense of what we have read so far, and we can flesh out the confusing parts. I assigned a few chapters to each literary response group, and had them create wikis to present the key points to the rest of the class. This seems to be working so far.... But now we are a few days behind. Also, I know a large chunk of my students aren't doing the reading. We have the novel on audio, so we starting playing it when we see these kids in RTII at the end of the day. The videos of HF aren't approved, so I can't play anything like that. I need to find a way to really engage them! I am currently trying to get them excited by expressing to them that this is a story of adventure.... not so different from Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, etc. I am trying to focus on that aspect of it. But I don't think they are buying into it. Also, for the the next writing assignment, I am going to have them write their own adventure story, or write another adventure for HF. On another positive note, their writer's notebook entries have been incredible. They are writing about their own unlikely friendships (like Huck and Jim), different times in their own lives when they assumed a different character roles (like Huck does many times in te novel), and how they have seen racism affect people in their own lives. The writer's notebook is a vital part of my English classroom... I could not imagine teaching without it :)
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One thing I had them do was write a letter from Huck to "Mr. Mark Twain" (as Huck calls him in the beginning) and explain what Huck has learned about some of the themes. One of the requirements was to write in the dialect. In terms of "liking" the assignment, I'd give it like a 4 out of 5. I think most of them enjoyed that part of it. One of the students even requested a "Talk like Huck" day (which we didn't get to do because she mentioned it on the last day). Another thing I planned on doing (but again, did not get to due to time constraints) was an apology letter to Jim after Huck put the dead snake in Jim's bed. Other scenes might also work for an apology letter (I think that's a cool idea, but maybe I'm the only one...). Tim Dougherty was also talking about mini-lessons on dialect. He was talking about some island down in Virginia or something where these people hadn't had much contact with mainlanders over the centuries and their dialect is pretty much the same as it was in Colonial times. Asking Dougherty about it might result in a long conversation, so it might be better to try looking it up, lol.
ReplyDeleteIt is a fun one to teach though. My one student offered to wear different costumes each day for the rest of the school year as a result of Huck Finn (he was also really excited to wear them anyway). It's fun stuff.