New Assignment and Holiday Preparations

As some are in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah and others are preparing for Christmas, I know what all of my students are primarily concerned with: "What do I have to blog about in Kain's class?".  Fear not young scholars, this is a light week of blogging, and I am not requiring any blog activities over break.  I firmly believe that your break should be spent enjoying your family and your youth.  Give Aunt Bertha a hug, you know, the one who always gives you scratchy wool socks, be kind to your annoying little brother, eat, and go out of the way to enjoy something new.  While on break, don't worry about any assignments for this course, only worry about seizing the moment and enjoying your time off.  But, break hasn't begun yet, and we will return; so outlined below is the structure of our current unit and the blogging expectations I have for it.

Independent Reading Unit:
        Step 1: Select a book of your choice to read.  The book must be over 200 pages and must be of a reading level commensurate to your own.  That is to say, I don't want to see you trying to read any "Hardy Boys" novels.  The book can be either fiction or non-fiction and must not be a graphic novel.

       Step 2: Email me (ikain@oswego.org) a 2-3 paragraph synopses of the book that you are going to read.

      Step 3: Read.  You will have two weeks to work independently, in class, on your reading and blogging.  You must be finished with your selected work by Monday, January 9th, 2012. 

      Step 4: Blog about it.  I am expecting you to write four blogs in total, two for each week given you to complete the assignment.  I will check your blogs every Friday. The blogs should be concerned with your visceral reactions to the work you are reading, any connections that you can make between your selected work and any other works we have discussed or topics we have discussed in class, or any other analytical topics that the reading of your selected work inspires you to discuss.

       Step 5: Present your work:  Each of you will have to give an oral presentation on the work that you have selected.  You will have two options to present the book: 1. Create a video presentation; 2. Do a book talk where you act as a character in the work who discusses the finer points of the work he or she is in.
The presentations will begin on January 11th, 2012.  I will give you a more detailed written assignment for the presentations.

     Folks, this is an opportunity for you to shine.  You have selected the work to read and discuss, and you are going to discuss it on your blogs and in your presentation.  It is here where I become the student and you all become teachers.  So, teach me, inspire me, show me what effective readers and thinkers you are.  I look forward to following your posts and listening to what you have to say.

      We have just finished our reading of Mark Haddon's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime.  It is an interesting piece of fiction that beckons the reader to address the logical, yet uncertain, nature of life.  On several occasions Christopher, the autistic protagonist of the story, makes this claim based on his understanding of the world around him; he says, "Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.  I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them." (Haddon 12), and "And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward ansers in the end." (Haddon 62) These examples illustrate the nature of the book's focus, but be sure, this book is no one-trick-pony.  There are several topics raised that fuel further deliberation by the reader.  But, I am not looking to write a book review here, rather, I would instead like to point the focus to my student's writing and thinking on the book.

      During the past few weeks we, as a class, have discussed many of the finer points of this novel.  It would be easy for me to jot some notes down from our previous classes to exemplify our discussions but I would rather let my students do that through their own reaction/reviews.  Today, I asked my students to write a reaction/review to the novel.  I specifically left this as an open-ended assignment.  There are no real perameters except length, so they can write about whatever it is they feel compelled to write about.  Please read the student blogs that are located at the bottom of this page.  Enjoy them and comment if you wish. 

STUDENTS: below I have attached a few hyper-links.  The links are connected to three reviews of the book.  If you are having difficulty understanding what to write in your reaction/review, or how to write the reaction/review use these as examples.  I look forward to your reactions.


Rebecca Joines Schinsky's (The Book Lady) general review of the book: http://www.thebookladysblog.com/2008/10/29/book-review-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-by-mark-haddon/

Chittaranjan Andrade, M.D. review of the book in the context of pediatric medicine/psychology: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2139916/

Matthew C. Fleenor's discussion of astronomy and the book: http://roanoke.edu/Documents/curious_astronomy.pdf

Day One of the Experiment

Today my classes are beginning to design and post their individual blogs. I will be posting the topic of their blogs at the top of my page. To view their posts and sites use the links below in the "Student's Blogs" section. Enjoy!

The Process...

It is easy to say that twenty-first century students are inundated with technology. They participate in Facebook, Twitter, and many other social and technological venues. With that said, it is not as easy to claim that all of this participation includes genuine dialogue or critical thought. So, in an effort to connect the two realities we are starting, as a class, to attempt to engage in some meaningful dialogue concerning some of the texts and discussions that we read and participate in for class.

Each student will create their own Blogger blog, design it the way they want it to be, and write at least two posts per week. Each student's blog will be linked to this blog. Some of the student's posts will be written in response to assigned topics while other posts will be more freely formed. In all of the responses my expectations of the students are that they will think critically and engage in thoughtful writing. I also anticipate that my students will read and respond to their peers' blogs as well. As this is for a high school project, all Oswego High School policies concerning students' appropriate use of language, bullying, and the like, apply and will be strictly enforced.

So, have fun with the posts, be creative, thoughtful, critical, and entertained. I look forward to seeing what happens.