Sunday, February 28, 2010

Working within the limits


The last week I've been thinking alot about different elements of senior English work programs. I've been struggling to get my head around a upcoming unit and questioning the sequence of some of our program - or maybe I'm just getting bored after three years doing the same texts/topics.

So, this morning when someone (I'm sorry, I can't find the original tweet in my stream!) shared a link to a voicethread looking at alternative assessment for Hamlet I was very interested.

I like these ideas and I can easily see how I could work them into our middle school program (now to transform our middle school program to include Shakespeare!), however I'm not sure I could work around the mandated genre and assessment aspects of our senior syllabus.

In fact, I've been struggling with ways to avoid a repetitive senior program when of the three essential written tasks one must be expository, one imaginative, and one persuasive/reflective. Of these one can be completed in open conditions (assignment), one in unprepared exam conditions and the final as a prepped exam. Typically, expository = essay, imagiantive = narrative of some form and persuasive/reflective = argumentative essay/rationale/ Feature Articles.

Seems quite a narow range really, but with the restrictions of the syllabus how do I broaden the scope?

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Hello! I happened across your blog and I'm enjoying it because I'm also an English teacher. I work as a substitute these days so I am in all kinds of classrooms, but I'm still an English teacher in my heart!