Infographics for Novels

I finally have a moment to post about a great project that I did with my students last semester. We were reading Julius Caesar and I wanted them to work on their digital skills in a way that isn't just technology. I also wanted them to practice their essay skills without writing an essay.

I decided to make an infographic project! They had to compare (or contrast), William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to Tina Fey's Mean Girls. There are other movies you can do this to (21 is one I've seen many teachers do), but I like Mean Girls because the high schoolers can really relate to it. Plus, I teach a lot of exchange students from other countries. Since my school is private, I appreciate the ability to point out that no, not every public high school in America is like their pop portrayal.

The assignment:

Mean Girls, has a lot in common with Julius Caesar. Just look at the themes! However, since the movie and play have vastly different settings, and audiences, it isn't just a modern adaptation (like Ten Things I Hate About You and Taming of the Shrew). In your infographic, create an analysis of the play vs. movie where you argue the basic story of Julius Caesar was changed specifically because one one thing. Please support your ideas with at least 6 pieces of textual evidence (three from the movie, and three from the play).

For example: They could argue that because Regina was much younger than Julius Caesar, the movie becomes a comedy rather than a tragedy.

I got students started by telling them they could think about which characters were alike, and then why they are different.

For example:
Cady -Brutus
Janis-Cassius
Regina-Julius

Many students also want to say Gretchen is like Caesar (mainly because of her monologue where she suggests Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Give freedom here! Whatever makes the most sense to them, is what they should support.

They could also look at the setting

For example:

Students High School vs Politicians and Soldiers in Rome

60BC vs 2004

A small town near Chicago, Illinois vs The Roman Empire

And anything else they found interesting! Heck if they wanted to I'd be happy if they wrote about fashion, or diction.

Some example, "thesis statements" from my students (you can see their complete infographic by clicking on the links)

• In the movie Mean Girls Regina's ambition destroys the dreams of others, but in the play of Julius Caesar his ambition destroys his life.
• The play Julius Caesar, written by William Shakespeare, talks about a character name Caesar whose ambition was potential, whereas the movie Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey, talks about Regina whose ambition was destroying social life of others.
• The differences in the stories comes from the difference in themes. Julius Caesar is a serious play with honor and a historically backed betrayal of one of the great Roman rulers. On the other hand, Mean Girls talks about betrayal at a smaller scale and relationships with other classmates.
• In the movie Mean Girls written by Tina Fey, and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare, their main themes is individuality. Whereas Cady cares only about the good of herself, Brutus cares about the good of his country.

This was a great way to get them practicing essay writing skills, without making them write essays. They needed to find support (quotes), interpret the quotes, and analyze them to support their argument.

 It was challenging, but they really enjoyed it!

This could have been done entirely as a homework assignment, but we spent two days working on it in the computer labs my school has on campus.

There are quite a few infographic tools to choose from. I let my students select their own, but in the future, I plan on limiting it to one site. This time troubleshooting the whole class got complicated as they each needed different directions.

The three sites I suggested to my students were:
http://piktochart.com/ 
https://venngage.com/
http://www.easel.ly/

They were all free sites and I thought they all worked just fine. My students seemed to prefer piktochart. I would suggest you find the one that you like the most since you'll be the one answering their questions.

That's it! Has anyone else used infographics with their students? I am looking forward to including them in my speech class!

Creative Character Quizzes

These aren't the quizzes that your students have to study for! These quizzes make your students use their critical thinking skills, inference skills, grammar skills and technology skills...what more could you want?

If your students like taking Buzzfeed quizzes or any quiz online then they will appreciate this assignment.

My students were reading the Crucible, but it can be easily adapted to any book (or even classmates, teachers, local politicians, etc.). For classes that don't read literature I've also used quizzes to review vocabulary.

As a class we discussed what types of questions we could ask. There were two types we discussed:

1. The literal question.

• These questions asked about things we could literally see. 
• For example: Would you cheat on your significant other?
• Never! I am a good honest person.
• Yes, but I would feel awful later!
• If they were cute and I liked them.
• I am very religious so of course not!
• In this questions we can tell who the answers refer to based on actions or words stated.
• Elizabeth is a good and honest woman who never cheated.
• John cheated, but he felt bad.
• Abigail had an affair with John,so she would be OK with cheating.
• Hale is a reverend, so he is religious.

2. The symbolic question

• These questions require more interpretation.
• For example: What is your favorite color?
• Black
• White
• Red
• Grey
• In these question the answer may depend based on who is writing the quiz
• John Proctor is depressed so he is black.
• Elizabeth is very innocent so she is white
• Abigail is passionate so she is read.
• Hale is grey because he is confused by what is happening in the town and getting more and more depressed.

Once the students understand the differences I gave their requirements.They had to create a 10 question quiz involving four characters. In addition to the quiz they needed to give me a paper that explained their answers.

Once they completed their quizzes they put them online (tryinteract.com is a great site for this) and take at least two other quizzes.

It is a fun project that makes students cite evidence from the text and shows how well they understand the characters.

You can buy the directions and worksheets that go with this for The Crucible on Teachers Pay Teachers at this link

Otherwise be inspired and make your own! Here are two examples from my students

Powered by Interact

Powered by Interact

Circle of Life - First Day Activity

This is a simple, "Getting to know you," activity that I have also incorporated into my literature classes.

While it was not designed to focus on grammar points it does fit nicely into:
Questions"Is it _________?"
"Do you ____________?"
"Are you _____________?"
Tag Questions (if you wish)
"You're 21, aren't you?"
Simple Present / Simple Past
You have three cats.
You learned to ride a bike at 15. 

To start I make a large circle on the board and put random numbers in it. For example 32, 29, 4, 1, 18, etc. To add some variety you can add words or sketches as well.

Then I have students guess what these numbers are. A sample interaction could go like this:
Student 1: "You are 32 years old."
Me: "Great guess, but nope. I am not 32 years old yet."
Student 2: "You have 32 boyfriends."
Me: "No, that's far too many."
I let this continue as long as students are interested. If the questions start dying down, and no one has the correct answer, I tell them "I've travelled to 32 countries"

Then we continue with the next number.
29- I am 29 years old
4- My parents had four children.
1- I have one cat.
18- I crashed my car at 18.

Make sure your example has variety! If everyone just has their address, and how old they are it gets old very fast! However, if you have some unique experiences, it makes this a lot more fun.

Some numbers my students used:
How many times they had been to the USA.
How old they were when they first left the country.
How many years they have studied English.
When they started studying English.
How old their pet is.
How many languages they speak.
etc.

I have students first make their circle at their desk on a notecard or scrap paper. Then I ask for volunteers who would like to present.Note: When I do this it is very rare that the entire class presents. You could also do it in small groups if you want to make sure everyone presents, but I don't like forcing students to the front of the class on day one. This is a good way to see what students will be volunteering, what students will be asking questions and what students may need a little prodding.

Students like this way of getting to know one another. It is more dynamic than just standing up and introducing themselves!

This is also a great activity to use when talking about characters. Students (or the teacher) can use it to get the rest of the class to guess what numbers are significant for any character from a novel, or an author. I like to put students in small groups and assign each group a different character. This lets them collaborate.

This activity is great because it creates disequilibrium. The random seemingly unrelated numbers and words don't make a clear patter. Students are forced to create equilibrium by creating sensible patterns and associations for them. Even when students guess incorrectly they are still forced to reason and more likely to remember the real numbers significances. This process makes the answers stick in their brains more effectively than if they were simply told all the facts at the beginning.

You can adapt it in MANY ways. Get specific. Tell them that they have to make the circle about their family, school, summer vacation, favorite movies, etc. Students will be able to do this on almost any topic if you give them guidance.

What's your favorite, "Get to know you" activity to use with your students?

You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!

Tweet on behalf of a character

The cellular view (click the photo to view it bigger)

When my students read stories I like to give them different assignments to keep things interesting. For example, I may have them draw a character, make a soundtrack for a chapter, or create a Twitter account for a character.

"Pretend a character had a cell phone. Create a fake Twitter account for this character (on paper, not online). This should include a username, picture, description/bio, and FOUR tweets (one from each chapter). The tweets should make it clear that 1. You read the chapter and 2. You understand the character. You can tweet what they were thinking, feeling, or hoping."

This student used stickers! (click it to view it bigger)

Another artsy one! (click to view it bigger)

The results are usually entertaining. The students enjoy making them, and I think they show more comprehension than a simple summary. Rather than telling me what they read, they are inferring and predicting what one of the characters thinks about it. These higher level thinking skills are key!

I love how some students made the project look like their smartphone. That is, after all, how they usually view Twitter.

Some got really artistic with it and used their  creativity to make different designs, and pictures they felt would best suit the character.

Chris Chambers computer made account (click to view it bigger)

Others preferred to use sample layouts (available online) and make their Twitter account on the computer (in Microsoft Word, Paint, or Photoshop)

What is really fun about this is sometimes students look outside of the main characters and choose to focus on a lesser known character. This really let's them use their creativity and develop a character; sometimes further than the author had the opportunity to do.

A lesser seen character. Milo's Twitter. (click to view it bigger)

In this post you can see an example of each "type" of submission.

Each one shows a knowledge of the character. For example, one student chose to give Teddy a camouflage background knowing he admired his military father.

The student who selected Milo Pressman made his avatar a ferocious dog since Milo is the owner of Chopper.

Many of the students picked clever usernames for their accounts such as: GordonInvisibleBoy since Gordie says his parents always ignore him.

In short, even though these projects are shorter than say, a summary of each chapter. I feel like I can still assess who did the reading.

You can easily adapt this to a short story, or change the frequency by making them tweet more per chapter.

I also know teachers who have students make these accounts online and interact with one another.

While that may be an option for me in the future, right now privacy issues and students with varying levels of Internet access prohibit this.

Nonetheless, I think doing it on paper still gets the same results! If you get a chance to do this (or do something similar now) let me know in the comments. I'd love to see what you do differently, or what worked (and didn't) for you!

Interesting in doing this activity with your students? You can download a copy of the assignment (with examples and a rubric) on Teachers Pay Teachers.(If you haven't signed up yet you can register for free here)

Who's the character?

I don't like to give my students simple questions when we read stories. I like to make them think.

In addition to the plot and setting, one of the key aspects of any story is how the reader sees a character.

One assignment that I like to do is have them tell me what actor or actress they would like to play a character. They have to give me specific reasons like, "I think _______ should be played by ______ because in the story he's really a wimp and in his most recent movie he plays a wimpy guy." or "The author describes her as short and petite, so I think ______ would be a good actress."
It is also a way to get me to know what kind of movies and actors my students like. What I really like to do though is have them find five quotes from the story and use them to draw a picture of the character.

Here are some examples from the past students:

 

This is Chris, from Stephen King's, "The Body," I like this one because she really listened when I said it didn't need to just be physical traits. In the story we know Chris is abused, so she took a quote that discussed it and added band aids to his face and a bloody knee. A key point of the novella is that Chris stole his father's gun, so she took a quote about it and drew him with the gun.

 

 This is Mr. McClane from, Phillip K. Dick's, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." I like this because it was simply done and shows it isn't about being the best artist (I am not!) it is about finding the quotes and drawing what they tell you.

 

This was from the first year I taught at ITESM and the students read Rip Van Winkle. This student didn't take quotes so much as descriptive words, but it still shows a good example of "bringing the story to life."

Similar to my last post about popcorn reading, this is nothing new, but it is something fun that students enjoy and keeps them from answering simple questions, "Who is Chris?" "How old are the boys" "What city do they live in?" Rather than having your students memorize, help them understand! 

You can buy this assignment (with two others and an alternative writing prompt for the students hwo hate drawing) at TeachersPayTeachers for LESS THAN $2.00! Complete with rubrics and examples.