This past week, I started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in my English 11 classes. Now, I know that there are two camps when it comes to Huck Finn, and I must admit that I am in the camp that LOVES Huck Finn.
I first read the book when I was in third grade and was going through a phase in which I had to read all the "old" books on my bookshelves that my parents had read when they were little. Even though I didn't entirely understand it at the time, I enjoyed the adventure of a young boy being able to travel down the Mississippi River without a care in the world. (Like I said, I didn't really understand it at the time.)
When I was in 10th grade, I had to read the book again in my English class. It was actually the first book we read that year, and I was excited because I'd already read it and knew I liked it. I will be completely honest: if I hadn't already read and liked the book, I probably would have hated it as a result of reading it in 10th grade. Why? My teacher (we will call her "Mrs. F") didn't really do anything to make it interesting, and she never called on me when she asked for volunteers to read. I quickly became disengaged in class and read to myself, instead of following along with her monotone voice or the other students she picked to read. What's more is that when Mrs. F handed back our essays on the book, she told us that she'd graded them really "hard" and that we should be happy if we got a "B". We were Honor's students, so this worried us, and we all prepared ourselves for the worst. She wandered up and down the aisles of the classroom, handing back our papers; when she got to me, she looked at my grade and, before giving me my paper, said, "Writing's not your best thing, is it?" I was shocked. I managed some retort along the lines of, "Well, I just don't like to write about what people tell me to write about," as I grabbed the paper from her. When I looked at my grade, I was left dumbfounded. I had gotten an 80% - a B- ... As I watched her shuffle on toward her next victim, I shot laser beams through her back. She had just told us to be happy with a B, implying that not many students earned B's, and then she insulted my writing even though she'd given me a B-. What??? As I said, if I hadn't already liked Huck Finn, I'm sure I would've hated it after this experience.
This event (coupled with another similar experience I had in 8th grade) paved the road ahead of me, leading me to become an English teacher. I loved reading, but I hated my 10th grade English class. In deciding to become an English teacher, I thought to myself, "I don't want my students to have to go through what I went through. I want them to love English." Now that I have been an English teacher for 7 years, this is still what drives me. I have succeeded with some students, but I always feel the need to do more. (I know it is impossible for me to make every student love English, but I can try, can't I?)
The first unit of the year was The Crucible, a book I'd read in the same 10th grade class and hated. I had shied away from it in the past for this very reason. However, I wanted to challenge myself this year. I re-read the book over the summer, and I actually liked it! I found myself getting wrapped up in Abigail's lies and rooting for John Proctor to expose her for what she really was. If you did an informal poll of my students to see how many of them liked The Crucible, most of them would tell you that they hated it. Even though most of them understood what was going on, I still feel that, as an English teacher, I failed.
Now, I've had quite a bit of success with Huck Finn in the past, but I still usually wind up with about a 50-50 split of lovers and haters. My goal this year was to try to get more of the students to love it, because, as we all know, they are more willing to learn and to take risks if it is with subject matter that they are actually interested in.
In the two weeks leading up to our unit on Huck Finn, I stumbled across two blogs that helped me solidify my plans for the unit. The first blog was "How do you keep students engaged with a class novel?" by Jen Roberts. In this blog, Roberts explains how she tricks her students into reading The Great Gatsby on their own. She explains that she starts out by reading in class and making sure the students really understand what's going on. Once she has them hooked into the story, she starts assigning reading for homework. I have done this in the past with Huck Finn, but I definitely did not do this with The Crucible. I tend to fluctuate between: "But they won't read if I assign it for homework!" and "But they need to read outside of class!" Roberts' argument was: "They won't read if I assign it for homework IF they don't like it. If they are already invested, then they will read." When I was teaching The Crucible, I was in the "But they need to read outside of class!" phase, so I pushed them through the book instead of drawing them into the book. I decided to go back to how I used to do things with Huck Finn and begin by reading together in class.
The other blog I came across was "Start a Reading Revolution: Flip Your Class With Blogs" by Brian Sztabnik. While I am not quite ready to employ all of his methods in his "flipped" classroom (though I may be later in the year), what I decided to try was the idea of choice and allowing students to pick an active reading strategy which works best for them. Sztabnik explains that his students "must read actively, but get to choose their method: index cards, post-it flags, bullet points in their notebooks, etc." Usually, I force my students to take Cornell Notes while they read. Do I really believe that taking Cornell Notes is the best method of active reading? No. Actually, I, myself, prefer to highlight and write in my book. So why do I use Cornell Notes? Honestly... because my AVID students need Cornell Notes. Horrible. I know. Furthermore, I've had a lot of frustration with asking my students to take notes while they read because it doesn't actually force them to read the book - they can very easily go to SparkNotes, read the summary of the assigned chapter, and take their notes from there (despite the fact that I warn them not to do this and catch them when they do (see last week's post)). Therefore, I decided, "What the heck? My AVID kids can still take Cornell Notes, and everybody else can do what works best for them."
When I introduced this to my class, I told them they could take notes, they could use sticky notes, they could use note cards, they could buy their books (gasp!) and highlight and write in them, or they could download an e-copy of the book for free to highlight and take notes on. I also told them that if they had some other method, that was fine, too; they just needed to be doing something. One of my students said, "But I read best by doing nothing." To which I replied, "That's the problem. You need to do something." I am still making the students who aren't taking notes in their notebooks write a one-sentence-summary of each chapter in their notebook, just so I can give everybody points for whatever they're doing. A girl asked if she could just write the summary at the end of each chapter; I told her the point was to have her reading actively, and if she just writes something at the end, then there is no guarantee that she is stopping to think and reflect while she's actually reading.
The results? Well, we are only a week in, but so far, my students seem to be enjoying the book. When we read the first couple of chapters together, they laughed when Huck offered the gang Miss Watson to kill, and I thought, "I've got them!" I think I am going to give it a few more days before I actually start assigning chapters for homework. Like Jen Roberts, I want it to seem accidental; I want to be in the middle of the chapter, so they want to go home and finish it on their own. Will I be able to pull it off? Only time will tell...
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Ease of use: This is extremely easy to implement. You just have to be willing to go slow at the beginning. You need to be okay with the fact that you will spend an entire week (or more) reading about two chapters in class every day.
Would I use this again: I'm stuck with it right now. When I am done with the unit, we will see, but so far, I like it.
Downsides: Grading is going to be tricky. I told the kids I am going to have to be able to see what they're doing, but that means I am going to actually have to look through their books if they are using sticky notes. I don't have all of that figured out yet, but that's okay. Also, we definitely won't have time to read the entire book in class. I am going to need to figure out the sweet spot in terms of how much reading to assign for homework once I get to that point. I am a little worried about Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, but hopefully, I will have the kids completely wrapped up in the story by then... We'll see...
Applications: Any novel unit. Or, if you go with the bigger idea of "choice", any lesson, ever.
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