Beyond “Describe How This Changed Over Time” I want to go beyond just listing how a character changed. Let's get students thinking about that change!
From “Summarize” to “Synthesize” Even what seems like a low-level "summarize" task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom's Taxonomy.
Creating Better Research Questions Once students have a topic they'd like to research, how do we help them form more interesting questions?
What Makes An Antagonist Effective? It's really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!
Halloween: Characters Dressed As Characters What if characters from film or literature dress up like other characters based on some parallel such as: conflict, trait, accomplishment, etc.
Coats of Arms, Seals, and Other Heraldry Symbolic seals, crests, and coats of arms are a common concept across cultures. From the simplicity of Japanese mon to the regality of English coats of arms all the way to America’s Great Seal, humans around the world create graphical representations of themselves.
What Influences A Character’s Traits? To add depth to character analysis, let's look beyond a character's traits and dig into what influenced them to have those traits.
An Image for Divergent Thinking Practice I think this is an interesting way to practice our students' divergent thinking skills. What else could this trash can's icon represent?
Think Like A Philosopher Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.
Using A Classic: Charlie Chaplin Integrating a classic is a great way to pump up an otherwise simple lesson. It seems like a black and white movie is the last thing a kid would want to see, but classics are classics for a reason!
