Although LEGEND OF THE ELEMENTALS is written primarily for entertainment purposes, as an English teacher I sometimes think very hard about how the text can be co-opted for educational purposes. I will never forget the fantastic opportunities given to me as a student to reflect upon books such as The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit and 1984... which, combined with myriad other factors, contributed to my decision to become an author. And so I remain very much aware of the importance of choosing books that resonate with students as individuals and the class at large. I think that, ideally, students should be able to choose their own texts and reflect upon them in ways most appropriate to them individually... but I also understand that, more often than not, practical constraints--including but not limited to immaturity--preclude the ideal. And so tasks led--or at least strongly guided--by the teacher become necessary.
I am often tempted to write a thorough (mini)curriculum to tackle LEGEND OF THE ELEMENTALS as as a whole... but, without a great deal of context, this becomes very difficult. With that said, the following is an outline of a one-off, decontextualized scenario, submitted (and graded favorably) as part of my master`s program in TESOL. For the original assignment, as you can see, I have imagined a context that I felt may be appropriate to the proposed task, but whether or not I was right is up to the judgement of the teacher, and, ultimately, up to the students, as expressed in practical outcomes: Did they learn something from it? Do they understand how/why they learned something from it? Did they find it valuable (if not enjoyable, then at least interesting)? Was the lesson, objectively, a valuable educational experience for all involved? Guided by these student-centered principles, and a great deal of particular classroom context (including institutional goals), I would very much enjoy the opportunity to work "one-on-one" with teachers (and students, if reasonably possible) to develop English lessons that have real impact. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sample Legend of the Elementals Reading Lesson Plan
Learner Profile:
Junior-high international school students with a high degree of
fluency in English and a relatively high degree of emotional
maturity, in a class of between 8 and 40 students. This lesson would
take place midway or later in the semester, when students and the
teacher are familiar with one another, when general classroom
expectations have been well-established.
Pre-reading Learning Objectives:
Students will focus on the classroom subject at hand, with awareness
raised. Prompted by audio-visual motivation, students will interact
with each other in spoken English. Students will engage their
episodic intellectual processes, relating themselves to a
hypothetical situation in English.
Pre-reading Task:
Students have greeted the teacher, and all initial classroom
management procedures (attendance, announcements, etc.) have been
addressed. Students are seated, quiet, and paying attention to the
teacher. The teacher plays a short video from Youtube featuring
wingsuits (for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmlAW_1hgT8
). As the video ends, the teacher says, “I know you're probably a
bit young for bungee jumping or jumping out of an airplane, but have
you ever fallen down or jumped from a high place... into a pool or a
lake, for example? Were you excited or scared, or both? Did you land
safely, or did you get hurt? If you haven't jumped or fallen down
form somewhere high, you can talk about your impressions from videos
like on Youtube, what you've seen on TV, or heard about directly from
someone who's done something like that. Please form your desks into
pods, groups of about 4 of your neighbors, and talk about it.”
After a quick visual check to verify that students are on task,
rearranging their desks and talking appropriately and in English, the
teacher rewrites the prompt on the board: “Discuss your experiences
falling or jumping from high places. Use your imaginations and/or
stories you've heard.”
After writing the prompt, the teacher is free to patrol the
classroom, ensuring that students remain on task, and, as necessary
and appropriate, identifying students who may have had traumatizing
experiences with a fall, and perhaps discouraging discussions of
suicide, for example, that may tend toward counterproductive
distraction.
After an appropriate amount of productive small-group discussion (no
more than a few minutes), the teacher brings the students back into
their original (teacher/forward-facing) classroom orientation for
larger discussion, using a question form such as, “What were the
most interesting stories you heard? Please talk about what you heard
from your friends, not what you yourself said originally.”
After working through a small amount of stories in a conversational
manner, students' intimate, episodic memories should be activated,
and the reading itself is ready to be introduced.
Reading Objective:
Students will read an unfamiliar text with the goal of getting the
gist. Students will encounter surprising reading to inform practical
reading strategies: specifically, that writing is sometimes intended
to confound expectations. Students will learn to anticipate
encounters with the surprising and unusual in reading selections.
Reading Task:
The teacher holds up the text to be read and says, “This is part of
a story about someone who falls from a high place. You might expect
for a fall to end with a landing, soft or hard, with a parachute, or
with an injury of some kind, like we just talked about. Please read
along silently, reread as you need to, in order to understand the
situation, and be prepared to discuss what is... unique about this
fall, about this landing. When you're ready, tun the text face-down
and think about what surprised you, or maybe... what was supposed to
surprise you, but didn't surprise you. If you finish faster than your
friends, I'll put you in a small group to discuss what you read... in
low voices, of course, until everyone comes to a point where we can
begin a larger discussion.”
The teacher then passes out the text, allowing students to start
reading as soon as the selection is received. First visually checking
to make sure that students indeed appear to be reading, the teacher
then writes the new prompt on the board: “What surprised you? (What
was supposed to surprise you?)” That done, the teacher is free to
patrol the classroom, navigating toward hands raised silently by
students with questions. Meanwhile, the teacher is anticipating
problems with less proficient students, to be addressed one-on-one
and case-by-case. In the expected absence of behavioral problems,
students who finish quickly are directed by the teacher to take their
chairs and form a group at a reasonable distance from the quietly
reading students to discuss in low voices what they have read.
Text Summary:
In this early section of the authentic fantasy novel (the first in a
series, rated 4+ stars and frequently among the top 10,000 free ebook
downloads on Amazon.com), Ryan (the first-person narrator) is shoved
over the edge of a balcony by the mysterious Sensei. As he falls,
Ryan's innate ability to control the air is awakened. Ryan launches
himself over the opposite site of the cylindrical tower from which he
fell, and, after settling into a hovering position, Ryan is finally
dragged onto a balcony by his friend Jason.
Post-reading Objective:
Students will engage in communicative speaking practice, relating
themselves personally to the reading text. Students will engage with
feedback provided in relation to the reading tasks. Students will
apply meta-cognitive skills, reflecting upon what they have learned
and how they have learned it.
Post-reading Task:
Once all the students have completed reading (and perhaps rereading
parts of) the entire text provided (or most of it, in the case of
lower-proficiency students who would have been identified and
addressed case-by-case by the prudently anticipating teacher during
the reading period), then the class would come back together in its
original, teacher/forward-facing orientation for a survey and
discussion.
The teacher says, “Who was VERY surprised by what they read? Who
was pretty surprised? Who was not really surprised? Who wasn't
surprised at all? I'll repeat the questions. Please raise your hand
for the one that seems most appropriate to how you feel.”
The teacher then records the survey results for the four categories
on the board, using tally marks, and making sure that each student
has raised his hand once (and only once) in order to establish
baseline universal classroom participation. Students who are not
participating are addressed individually and, with help from their
peers and the teacher, assign themselves to a category, or else
create a new category. (This may take place once small-group
discussions have begun, in order to limit pressure on the individual
student from the group.) Then, the teacher says, “What do you see
here? Is there an interesting question you want to ask the class
based on what you read and what you can see here? Remember, try to
ask the question to the class, not to me!”
Students raise their hands for a chance to comment, and the students'
questions guide the discussion. In the case of disciplined students
highly motivated by the selection, moving directly back into free,
small-group discussion of the text and its twist(s) may be possible.
Questions such as “What surprised you? How do you know that this
situation isn't 'realistic'? Did you like it? Why or why not?”
could be pushed to the fire by the teacher, as necessary to guide
small-group discussion, with different group membership, possibly
randomized by the teacher.
Some key notes for the teacher to hit explicitly, either drawing
directly from student comments (in summary) or transitioning from the
small-group discussions back to the whole class for conclusion at the
close of the session: “Oftentimes, the most noteworthy,
extraordinary writing surprises us, and it's not just in cases in
fiction like this where the author wants you to think 'Wow, cool!' It
happens in science, for example. Copernicus surprised everyone when
he wrote that the earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around
the earth, and Darwin surprised everyone when he wrote that humans
and monkeys are related. We know it's true now, but the fact is,
arguably, that they wouldn't have been as famous if they hadn't
surprised the world so much. The lesson is this: anticipate the
unexpected. Or, as Sensei says a little bit earlier in the book:
'Accept the unexpected.' In life, things change... for better and for
worse, sometimes in reading, too. You have to be ready for it.”
Rationale:
“The teacher begins with a general introduction that also serves to
check the students' background knowledge about the topic. This
discussion not only orients the students to the topic but also
increases their levels of motivation; since the teacher has now
brought the topic to life, the students may want to learn more about
it by reading the passage” (Farrell, 2009, p. 41).
The main thrust of the lesson has been to anticipate surprises and
handle them in a top-down (Nuttal, 1996, p. 158), broad, higher-level
manner, combining whole-class discussion, group discussion, and
one-on-one direction for a variety of approaches in order to meet the
full spectrum of student needs. Students are tasked with reading
critically, predicting surprises, visualizing and summarizing the
action of the text, identifying genre (fantasy, not realism),
paraphrasing discussion to formulate new direction for the
discussion, and drawing conclusions and inferences, all of which are
effective reading strategies according to Farrell (2009).
Nuttal (1996) suggests that a general goal for a reading program
might be “To enable students to enjoy (or at least feel comfortable
with) reading in the foreign language, and to read without help
unfamiliar authentic texts, at appropriate speed, silently, and with
adequate understanding” (p. 31). To that end, scaffolding has been
provided, with simple prompts to begin discussions, probing questions
posed to elicit particular reasons throughout the discussion, and
explicit clarification to be provided. (See key notes for the teacher
to hit, above.) (Nuttal, 1996, p. 36)
By the end of the post-reading activity involving the unfamiliar
authentic text, students can be expected to have made some progress
toward enjoying reading in English as a second language, after
identifying what they did or did not enjoy about the reading, as a
by-product of the simple analysis of what did or did not surprise
them during the reading. Students who enjoyed the text may be quick
to ask, “What happens next?” The use of aroused interest to tap
into creative prediction ability, pushing the upper limits of Bloom's
taxonomy, should be encouraged (Krathwohl, 2002).Even for students
who did not enjoy the particular reading, they had been given ample
opportunity to identify the reasons for their lack of enjoyment, and
thus have been at least partially equipped with the means to identify
the opposite: texts that have qualities that the individual student
is likely to enjoy.
Nuttal also identifies the role of the student in reading activities.
Though the focus is clearly on the reading, the activities agree
largely with Nuttal's focus on oral classroom interaction (p. 36) in
a flexible, open-ended framework (p. 149). Throughout the given
lesson, students have been tasked to take an active part in learning,
leading their own discussions and dictating the larger class
discussion. “Don't explain — explore!” (Lewis, 2000, 22). The
students are responsible for monitoring their own comprehension,
discussing what surprised them personally, with help coming from the
teacher only as a last resort. “Usually, the ultimate objective is
to for the students to achieve global understanding: that is, to
understand the text as a whole and relate it to personal experience,
other sources of knowledge other texts, and so on” (Nuttal, 1996,
p. 151). By starting off with personal experience and others
experience and comparing that with the content of the text, students
are allowed the opportunity to intelligently compare and contrast
their expanded knowledge base. In learning about the intent of texts
to surprise, students learn to engage texts and take risks. They also
are given the opportunity to work with potentially delicate,
controversial subject matter (when the topic of suicide may come up)
as an appropriate challenge (as determined with all due
responsibility by the teacher) for learners' socio-linguistic skills.
(Nuttal, 1996, p. 33)
References
Farrell, T.S.C. (2009). Teaching Reading to English Language
Learners. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Krathwohl, D. (2002, Autumn). A
Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: an overview. Theory into Practice,
41: 4. Ohio State University.
ncdpi.wikipsaces.net/file/view/8+perspectives+on8-+rbt.pdf
Lewis, M., ed. (2000). Teaching
Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach.
Hove: Language Teaching Publications
Nuttal, C. (1996). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language
(2nd ed.). Heinemann.
Sommer,
J. (2012). Dream
Lines Part III - Wingsuit proximity by Jokke Sommer.
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmlAW_1hgT8
Thornbury, S. (2005). Texts in
context. Beyond
the Sentence: Introducing discourse analysis,
85.
Timmermeyer, K. (2012). Legend
of the Elementals, Book 1: Reintroduction.
Retrieved from http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/140553
An excerpt from Legend of the Elementals, Book 1: Reintroduction
When the four of us had gathered around him, Sensei put his arm
around me and pulled me so that I was looking over the edge.
“It is time for a demonstration,” he said.
The wind whistled, cold and mournful. The tower seemed taller than it
did from the outside. I gave Sensei a look and saw that he had
another arm over Jason's shoulder, while the girls were standing on
Jason's left. Then the old man let go of Jason to point a bony finger
straight down.
“Whatever happens, I want you to stay calm,” Sensei ordered, “and
watch closely.”
I peered through the thickening shadows for signs of anything
interesting, but there was nothing there, except the green-black ring
of grass that surrounded the tower.
“Are you going to show us your talent, Sensei?” Erin's
voice came from next to Jason.
“Hopefully not,” Sensei answered in a little more than a whisper.
He pulled back his arm and said, “There, look!”
I put more weight on the railing and bent lower, encouraged by
Sensei's excitement. As hard as I tried, though, I saw nothing but
dark green. And the next thing I knew, my knees were scraping over
the railing.
I fell. I twisted on my back and watched Erin, Kris and Jason draw
away in horror from Sensei, whose arms had pushed me over! The world
was spinning, around and around and upside down. It was a long, dark
way down, getting shorter every moment. A dream! I hoped, but
no, this wasn't like any dreams about falling. I didn't wake up. I
felt the wind tear through the space between my tensed fingertips.
Breathing was like inhaling a roar, a scream against the inside of my
mouth. My eyes wouldn't close. I was spinning. I saw the blur of gray
stone and orange sky and black forest. I was moving further from the
building. This was the end. After all the crazy things that had just
happened, this would make sense.
I suddenly remembered that in a high-speed collision, tightened
muscles tear more easily, so I relaxed. Now, I could close my eyes. I
inhaled a prayer… and suddenly felt something I could hold onto.
Instinctively, I grabbed at it.
It wasn't in my fingertips and it wasn't in my skin, though I felt it
across my whole body: power, energy, potential of some kind. It felt
like a billowing sail wrapped around me. I was suddenly no longer
spinning. Though my eyes were closed, I knew that I was now falling
face-first, spread-eagle, toward the ground.
It was like a sail… No longer just grabbing, I pulled.
A blast from the below hit me full in the face. Plummeting backward,
I opened my eyes. My hands were balled into fists, but there was
nothing in them but my own skin. Pulling again at the mysterious
force, in the opposite direction, I tried to stabilize as the dark
world shook about me.
I slowed, and my direction seemed to shift. The cliffs were ahead of
me. I was in a standing position. I noticed a massive circle of gray
sticking out from in the dark green as I flew over it. Something had
thrown me backward, over the tower. What was this? Twisting my body
to see where the arc was taking me, there came the whoosh of wind,
and I found myself falling again. I spread my fingers to pull once
more at whatever had saved me.
I shut my eyes against another loud, forceful burst of air. This time
it was a bit more moderate; I wasn't pulling as hard. This feeling,
whatever I was pulling on, helped me realize that I was rising again,
spread-eagle. I pushed with my arms this time, as if swimming, and
stopped rising. After a few moments, the hum of the blowing force—the
air, I knew it was—didn't seem so frightening. I found the courage
to open my eyes.
“If you're worried about Ryan, let me go.” It was Sensei's voice,
very close. “Grab his arm and pull him in,” he said.
I turned and saw Erin, Kris, and Jason rush into view on the balcony
immediately below. The tower seemed to be bobbing slightly, like a
boat on the waters of a lake, in tune with the whine of the air that
blasted beneath me. I felt something brush my foot—someone's
hand?—and I went off-balance, spinning, slowly this time, in the
air. The side of the tower was coming closer. I reached out, afraid I
would bust my head against the stone, pushed back, and threw my arms
down. It was as if I was holding onto the currents… and only needed
to assert my balance.
The next moment, I was standing straight up in the air. There was
Jason's arm outstretched. Kris and Erin were there, too, staring at
me wide-eyed. Sensei, though, stood with a satisfied half-smile, his
arms tucked into his wide, white sleeves.
Jason's hands closed around mine, and I immediately fell. The faint
roar finally stopped; I swung heavily against the side of the tower.
There was a thick smack, and something wet was running down my chin.
My left arm twisted painfully in its socket as Jason dragged me over
the stone balcony. Scraping over the rail—in the right direction
this time—I fell in a heap. Static buzzed in my brain, and my
stomach sloshed. I rose to my feet beside my friends. Jason looked at
me and flexed his dusty hand. I grabbed my chin to stem the bleeding.
“How… did you do that?” Kris asked.
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