READINGS

One of the difficulties that we had in designing this unit plan was that we were planning a unit for students whom we do not yet know. In our attempts to become connoisseurs of education, we know that it is the deep, sustained intellectual appreciation with students over time that truly allows them to flourish and grow (Simon, 2012, p. 518). We chose to do a novel study of The Hunger Games because we believe this would be a text that would peak our students interest. There seemed to be a lot of creative ways that we were able to transform this popular text into an exciting mode for nurturing adolescents artistic growth within the classroom. Another important theoretical influence on our unit plan was that of authentic questioning. As VanDeWeghe explains, when teachers pose authentic questions to students, there are no known answers to these questions. We have been socialized to believe that in school, as in life, there is one correct answer to any issue, conflict or problem. However, the beauty of the inquiry approach is that it validates students responses. When we pose the critical question: Is Katniss a feminist hero or anti-hero?, everyone can participate and provide their responses, backed up with valid evidence. Authentic and inquiry based questioning increases students self-confidence in their literacy, by learning that what they believe and say truly matters (VanDeWeghe, 2003, p. 88). For instance, the method of uptake questioning was integrated into our unit plan. This technique ensures that our lessons are built around our students, as lessons are created based on students contributions and responses the previous

lesson (VanDeWeghe, 2003, p. 88). This made it difficult to plan a unit, because we wanted to make it flexible and adaptable, which still concrete, but it leads to exciting opportunities for changes to be made throughout. We believe that by utilizing these methods, we are helping our students to learn, respond to one another, and understand the text in new and exciting ways. We found that Ensruds article supported our desire to incorporate a lot of group discussion into our novel study unit and offered some great suggestions for effective ways to do so. For example, it offered some strategies for talking about a reading in class including asking students to refer to the text to support their answers, keeping discussion directed away from the teacher and toward other students and offering a starter question to get things going in class and group discussions. The article also suggested that creating small groups instead of using whole class discussions would be more effective because students tend to favour small-group seminars because they feel more comfortable getting involved and have more chances to participate in the discussions (Ensrud, 2002). Pirie offered a lot of theoretical evidence to support and reinforce our decision to incorporate a lot of drama and performance into our unit. Pirie writes that "when meaningful drama is not one of the essential limbs of the body of English, that body is disabled, but meaningful drama happens only when its function is clearly understood" (Pirie, 1997, p.50). From this we are sure that using drama in our unit is a good teaching decision, but that we need to discuss and reflect with students on why we are doing the dramatic activities that we are, such as to get perspective. Pirie also

writes that drama is a compelling invitation to widen our focus beyond the individual, to include interactions with others and with contexts, to push us beyond words to the non-verbal signs that comprise the bulk of everyday communication. This suggests that pedagogically, drama is has the potential to be deeply enriching to students learning and understanding in a novel study unit (Pirie 1997). However, Pirie advocates straying away from skits due to the risk that there will be little time for thinking and reflection from students, at the expense of merely entertaining the class. Instead Pirie suggests for example, having students brainstorm the questions they would ask a character if they had the chance, then inviting a volunteer to sit on a hot seat, and assume the role of the character, and improvise answers to the class questions. There are many other activities suggested in this article that could be really interesting to incorporate into our unit or at least into our teaching practices in the future. Pirie reminds us, though, that we shouldnt try to turn our English classrooms into dance studios. We must ask ourselves whether time spent on untraditional activities is worthwhile measured against whatever language growth is occurring. We believe that our use of drama in our novel studies unit will be very effective in engaging our students in critical thinking and reflection about the novel and about our world.

Works Cited Ensrud, M. (2002). Getting at what they want to know: using students questions to direct class discussion. Classroom Practices in Teaching English, 32, 79-85. Pirie, B. (1997). Unfolding Drama. In Reshaping high school English (pgs. 50-65). Illinois: Opinion Papers. Simon, R. (2012). Without comic books, there would be no me: Teachers as connoisseurs of adolescents literate lives. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55.6: 516-526. VanDeWeghe, R. (2003). Research matters: classroom discussions of literature. The English Journal, 93.1: 87-91.