Beyond the Textbook: Using Contemporary Literature Alongside Classics to Teach Specific Standards

School:: Immokalee High
Subject:: Language Arts
Teacher:: Edson Lopez-Jacobo
Students Impacted:: 75
Grade:: 9
Date:: December 6, 2016

Investor

Thank you to the following investor for funding this grant.

Richard Clemens - $128.00

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 81

Often one hears the phrase “great works”. Schools and teachers should be familiarizing students with texts by William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Jane Austen. While in essence that holds true, students often depart public school lacking significant knowledge of these authors or feeling they wasted years learning these authors’ pieces which they end up not even being able to recall. Without understanding why those authors were so critical, students are left ignorant of the foundations of literature.

The aforementioned issue falls under the following English Language Arts standard:

LAFS.910.RL.3.9(3) Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).

The standard explicitly states that students must cover a work by Shakespeare and determine how he was inspired by something biblical or historical. Basically, students are required to take an older work and compare it to an older work. The district provided textbook only provides examples from before the 21^st century to accomplish this. Furthermore, students never realize that all modern literature is directly or indirectly inspired by ancient works because they feel inherently disinterested by the works themselves. Currently, the following contemporary authors are among the most successful in young adult literature: Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games series), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter series), and Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson series).

The 9^th grade curriculum requires that The Odyssey as well as other Ancient Greek myths be covered. In the Percy Jackson series, Riordan draws on and transforms mythology. A total of eighty-one ninth grade students read and analyzed The Lightning Thief, the first book of the series. Students used the novel to practice the above standard through the following exercises:

(1) Allusions Tabs and Foldable: Authors often use allusions, or indirect references to something famous in literature, as a way to transform source material. Students placed different colored tabs for different allusions, such as gods, heroes, and monsters. In addition, they interpreted and categorized their allusions in a foldable as literary, mythological, or biblical.

(2) Literary Analysis: Authors of fiction that draw on ancient myths and literary masterpieces feature the same or similar plots, character types, and themes as the original works. By reinventing classic story lines, authors help contemporary readers relate to these beloved tales. Students learned the themes, motifs, and symbols prominent in class Greek mythology then used that as evidence to derive four themes from The Lightning Thief. They wrote four analyses for those themes and created a foldable study guide for someone who had not read or understood the novel.

Original Grant Overview

Goal

The goal of this request is to use a modern and more popular text alongside district or state provided texts, which tend to be classical literature, in order to teach a particular standard.

What will be done with my students

These materials will help students practice various ELA standards, such as figurative language, characterization, and/or source material.

Students will read Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. As students read, they will have guided questions derived from vital ELA standards as well as short responses all provided to mirror the standardized test format.

While providing standards-based instruction is first and foremost, the innovative or extension piece of any novel centered unit is the final task or project. Students will have one of three options based on their strengths and a clear standard:

(1) Create a poster board with ten cited allusions [figurative language] from Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. Each will have an image, drawn or printed. Each will explain the background of the allusion and its purpose within the text.

(2) Create ten trading cards of characters from Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. Each card will have a piece of cited dialogue from or about the character and describe the character's background, flaws, motivations, and other useful traits [characterization]

(3) Write an original story inspired by Greek mythology featured in Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief [source material]

Benefits to my students

Teachers are expected to present material using varying perspectives, differentiation, and scaffolding. By utilizing a modern text, they will enjoy the actual text more, be more more familiar with the text, and/or understand the text better.

The title is the Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan's first novel in his widely published Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series. Often the school provided materials use only complex classical texts to convey various standards. This works fine when assessing students using only texts that reflect standardized test content. However, when the only texts being exercised are classics, students tend to over focus on the actual text - and not the standards because they are working harder to comprehend than to implement.

The standards are supposed to be transferrable to any text. If they practice and show mastery with a text they understand and enjoy, they are likely to show that same level with a more difficult text. The following is the main standard students will focus on as they read The Lightning Thief:

LAFS910.RL.3.9(3) Analyze how author draws on and transforms source material [e.g. how Shakespeare treats themes and topics from Ovid]

If one dissects this standard, students are to read a text that was heavily based on a famous work. The example the state provides is Shakespeare and Ovid, two ancient authors whose language is almost indiscernible to most adolescents. That is a great example to use as final practice or an extension. However, the standard provides room to interpret. By using The Lightning Thief, students analyze how Rick Riordan, a modern author, was inspired by Greek mythology, a famous work.

Budget Narrative

Novels will be paperback, so they will be cheaper ($15-20 to $8-10). They will be purchased from a stock website so they will go down significantly (from $8 to $5). As a class set, they will be used year after year.

http://bulkbookstore.com/percy-jackson-and-the-olympians-book-one-the-lightning-thief-9780786838653?gclid=CKyCp9--4NACFYNAhgod49YIYQ

Items

#	Item	Cost
1	Lightning Thief classroom set (25 books)	$128.00
	Total:	$128.00

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