Title: MATERIALS AND METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH IN MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLS

PRQ: Consent of department.

This time consuming and demanding class is aimed at students who have had at least some modest previous teaching experience, but we will also be working directly with people with NO experience at all.   As this is the final course taken before student teaching, you will be expected to master several complex learning steps as well as to develop a realistic sense of what public school teaching entails. 

You will have a very heavy reading load, and writing lesson plans will take most of the semester as you write and re-write again and again until the course is over.  Two to three lesson plans are required for your final grade -- one each on drama, fiction, and poetry, with each plan having a writing component to it as well.  Generally, at least one of the lesson plans must be made for a one-period class, and one for a unit of two to four weeks. 

Required:

P. Fussell,  Poetic Form and Poetic Meter,  Mcgraw-Hill

K. Koch, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, Vintage

N. Atwell, In the Middle. 2nd ed., Boynton/Cook

G. Orwell, Animal Farm, Signet

W. Shakespeare, Hamlet & Julius Caesar, Arden (Preferred)

R. Macdonald,            Bedford Companion to Shakespeare 2nd ed., Bedford                    

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, Scholastic

Homer, The Odyssey (Fitzgerald Trans.), Anchor

Pritner,            How to Speak Shakespeare, Santa Monica P.

Sacher,            Holes, Yearling Bks

Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Perennial  

Ball, Backwards and Forwards, S.I.U. Press

VCB Packet    (available by Tuesday, first week of classes).

Recommended Texts:

L. Johannessen, In Case You Teach English, Merrill/Prentice Hall

Hirschfield, The Nine Gates of Poetry, Perennial

Noguchi, Grammar and the Teaching of Writing, NCTE

Graff & Birkinstein, They Say/I Say, Norton

Required Subscriptions:  Any two (2) N.C.T.E. Journals: English Journal (for Secondary English Teachers); Language Arts (for primary teachers);  College English (for university teachers);  CCC (for teachers of writing); RTE  Research/Teaching English.