Stapleton

On the subject of his novel, Grendel, John Gardner once said in an interview that he �wanted to go through the main ideas of Western Civilization � which seemed to me about� twelve? � and go through them in the voice of [Beowulf�s Grendel].� This is a handout I created that covers, chapter by chapter, some of the "main ideas" Gardner refers to. These ideas include (but are not limited to) Astrology, Solipsis

This is an activity centered around students viewing the 14th episode of the 9th seasons of The Simpsons - "Das Bus" - which is a parody of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Essentially students are asked to identify specific characteristics of Piggy, Ralph, Jack, etc. in the various Simpsons characters. On the back of the sheet, students are instructed to identify similarities and differences between the novel and the episode.

This file contains a detailed set of discussion questions for Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." In addition, you'll find an essay/paper assignment, along with a rubric to evaluate that essay.

This assignment is an after-reading activity for Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. It provides a detailed structure for having a class debate over the issue of euthanasia. The assignment is structured to be research-based; I use it to introduce students to academic research methodology. Also included is a rubric for evaluating the debate. Because this assignment isn't text-specific, it could be used in any class that covers euthanasia - history, social studies, philosophy, speech, etc.

This project was originally designed for students reading Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, but would be good for any unit on World War I or propaganda in general. Students first work on a guided analyze different pieces of WWI propaganda art (U.S., English, Russian, German, and French posters are included), identifying common colors, concepts, imagery, propaganda devices, etc. For the the second part of the project, students actually create their own piece of propaganda.

Contained in this zip file are a series of higher-level discussion questions for each chapter of George Orwell's. The questions are broken down by chapter and by book. I use them for group discussions with high school seniors.

This is a set of questions for each chapter in Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner. My goal was to create a set of questions for use in group discussion - specifically, I wanted them to be challenging - as in requiring textual specificity, for the most part - but also I wanted them to be open-ended in nature, ultimately facilitating deeper discussion. Many of these questions could also be used as essay prompts, or short answer questions on tests and quizzes.

Contained are two verions of 16 separate vocabulary quizzes, as well as a PowerPoint document with the words broken down by week. These quizzes - ten words a piece - follow the same format as the preview document. First they match the word to their definition, then they use the words in sentences. These quizzes are used in 11th grade American literature classes - though not specified, the words are a combination of SAT vocabulary, and from The Crucible, Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Sinner

Contained in this zip file are a series of higher-level discussion questions for each chapter of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The questions are broken down by chapter; after the final chapter, there are some more abstract thematic questions dealing with Gothic literature the myth of Prometheus, and the various applications of 'Frankenstein's Monster' as metaphor.

This assignment centers on the importance of boasting to Anglo-saxon culture. After students have started Beowulf and have discussed the various components of Anglo-Saxon culture - in particular comitatus, wyrd and wergild - they identify examples of these three concepts in the lyrics of Jay-Z's song, "Justify My Thug". (Trust me, the song is basically a 21st centural Anglo-Saxon boast.) After the lyric analysis, students are to write their own Anglo-Saxon boast. Contained in the zip file i

Tobias Wolff's modern short story "A Bullet In the Brain" is a brief, effective rendering of an individual's final moments as he reflects back on his life, having somehow lost the passion he once had for language as a young man. Contained in this file you'll find a set of discussion questions, a paper assignment prompt, and a rubric for evaluating the paper.

This is a PowerPoint I give on five act tragedies prior to my class reading Macbeth. During the presentation: -Students discuss the nature of what is tragic (now versus in Shakespeare's day). -They are exposed to the structure of a five act tragedy. -And they are exposed to relevant vocabulary, including: protagonist, antagonist, (dramatic and comic) foils, reversal, the tragic flaw, asides & soliloquy, antithesis. In this presentation I try to convey relatively dry information in as enter

This is a quick little assignment that provides a change of pace while getting through Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. It's a set of discussion questions (which can be used as a worksheet) comparing elements of AQWF - especially the abhorrent hospital scenes - to the band Metallica's music video for the song "One." The video and song are both interpretations of Dalton Trumbo's anti-novel Johnny Got His Gun, and there are a lot of comparisons to be made. Included on the sheet is a

This assignment is meant to serve as an alternative to an essay test. Students work in small groups and using their notes and the text of the play itself, they discuss the questions on the test. The questions themselves are comprehensive, big idea typed questions that require students to make connections to the play and to the real world, and require that they are textually specific. Students record themselves having these conversations, and them submit the recordings to the teacher via Goo

I use T.C. Boyle's short story "Greasy Lake" (which makes heavy use of contemporary allusions) in a mini-unit on how allusions in literature can be a path to a deeper understanding of/appreciation for whatever it is that we're reading. The assignment asks that the students do 'quick and dirty' research on approximately 15 allusions in the story (Bruce Lee, Andre Gide, '57 Chevys & The Battle of Khe Sanh to name a few). Then, in multi-media documents, they explain how the allusions color the ev

This project gelled when I realized that every semester that I teach Elie Weisel's Night, at least one student asks very sincerely something to the effect of 'why is it that Jews are so relelentlessly persecuted?' Such a simple question but with a very complex answer. This project breaks a class into groups of 10 reasearch teams. Those groups then are assigned one of 10 chronologically arranged instances of anti-Semetism (the earliest dealing with the Greeks, Egyptian, and Romans, the latest

This is an in class group assignment I came up with that was designed to aid students in asking better questions as they read novels (in particular John Gardner's Grendel, though it could be modified for any novel, really). It was a way attempting to make in class discussions more student directed.

For this assignment, instead of keeping a reading journal, students are asked to create individual Blog entires for each chapter of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Included is an overview of expectations and directions for creating a blog using Blogger (blogger.com).

This zip file contains a detailed assignment sheet for a group project where students modernize The Canterbury Tales. Also included is a rubric for grading the in class performance (or video project). Essentially, for this project students must determine who different characters from The Canterbury Tales would be in the year 2010, based on both Chaucer's descriptions in the General Prologue and the content of their individual tales.

In this constantly-evolving PowerPoint I've tried to address (note: in a personal, humorous way) every recurring writing problem I've come across in my 12th grade English Class. This 29 slide presentation covers, among other things: MLA format, essay structure, constructing a thesis, using direct quotes correctly, 'brief vs. concise,' underlining vs. quote marks vs. italics, & indefinite pronouns.