Meaningful Texts - A Classroom Collaboration
Instructions for a Bad Day - Shane Koyczan
This piece was written for an anti-bullying campaign to address the heightened suicide rate in a Northern Alberta community. This spoken word can be used not only for any grade, but even outside of the classroom as it can relate to anyone who has ever encountered a bad day. There are multiple videos made about this piece of spoken word. You can find one here that is just the piece playing over a black screen, and you can find one here that is a video that had been created by high school students, which is highlighted in Koyczan's documentary Conquering Silence. There are many other useful pieces on Shane's website that could be implemented into a classroom as well.
The Night Circus - Erin Morganstern
A novel geared towards students in either grade nine or higher. The text is incredibly descriptive and invites many topics and themes for class discussions. It speaks on community and belonging, and shows competitors or 'enemies' in the novel having to set their differences aside to work together and collaborate. With such descriptive language, you could use this novel as a writing prompt instead of a novel study. By listening to sections of the novel, you could ask students to draw visuals to go along with the text, or to write a side-story to go along with what has been described to them from the audio-book.
The Arrival - Shawn Tan
A wordless graphic novel that describes the immigration experience. It's a fantasy story, yet mirrors many realities that occur in the immigration process. The powerful message portrayed by pictures alone leaves a lot of opportunities for students to explore creative writing as they can describe what they think is occurring in the plot, write a plot for a certain segment of the graphic novel, stem their own story off of one of the pictures, etc. Can be used as a prompt for any grade level, depending on the difficulty of the lesson given, but I would go no lower than grade 4.
Validation - Kurt Kuerre
This piece was written for an anti-bullying campaign to address the heightened suicide rate in a Northern Alberta community. This spoken word can be used not only for any grade, but even outside of the classroom as it can relate to anyone who has ever encountered a bad day. There are multiple videos made about this piece of spoken word. You can find one here that is just the piece playing over a black screen, and you can find one here that is a video that had been created by high school students, which is highlighted in Koyczan's documentary Conquering Silence. There are many other useful pieces on Shane's website that could be implemented into a classroom as well.
The Night Circus - Erin Morganstern
A novel geared towards students in either grade nine or higher. The text is incredibly descriptive and invites many topics and themes for class discussions. It speaks on community and belonging, and shows competitors or 'enemies' in the novel having to set their differences aside to work together and collaborate. With such descriptive language, you could use this novel as a writing prompt instead of a novel study. By listening to sections of the novel, you could ask students to draw visuals to go along with the text, or to write a side-story to go along with what has been described to them from the audio-book.
The Arrival - Shawn Tan
A wordless graphic novel that describes the immigration experience. It's a fantasy story, yet mirrors many realities that occur in the immigration process. The powerful message portrayed by pictures alone leaves a lot of opportunities for students to explore creative writing as they can describe what they think is occurring in the plot, write a plot for a certain segment of the graphic novel, stem their own story off of one of the pictures, etc. Can be used as a prompt for any grade level, depending on the difficulty of the lesson given, but I would go no lower than grade 4.
Validation - Kurt Kuerre
A short film emphasizing the importance of giving someone validation, even if you don't know them. The plot shows a man who validates parking but also validates the customers that come to him. His acts of kindness make for a happier world around him, yet he eventually meets a woman who he cannot make smile. This short film does have conflict and resolution and is an amazing story wrapped up into a 13 minute bundle. Appropriate for junior and senior high students, as younger elementary may be lost on the concept.
This video can be used: to kick off community development, promote citizenship, as a pre-film study unit, to promote this kind of pleasantness in your students (random acts of kindness week?).
Stephanie's Ponytail - Robert Munsch
One of the most renowned Canadian authors for children's books, Robert Munsch uses this clever story to teach children about being unique and being their own person. He promotes the message that being unique is okay and if people are copying you then you should just take it as a complement. This larger social issue of conformity is made simplistic for children in this story, but you could also use it with Junior High students to show as a prompt for an assignment where they need to take a social issue and write about it in a way that makes it accessible to children (can use the idea of conformity, but also bullying, accepting other cultures, etc). The story can also be used to teach children about patterns in plot. There is repetition in Stephanie's style being copied by the kids, so as a teacher you could pause and ask students what they think will happen after Stephanie changes her hairstyle again.
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
A very serious post-apocalyptic novel that follows the journey of a man and his son as they try to survive in a hopeless world. The novel deals with some serious issues such as faith, love, humanity, cannibalism, and many more. The question that can prompt this novel could be: what makes you continue to live? Hope, spirituality of a person or higher being? What drives YOU?
Being such a heavy text as it is a depressing subject matter, I would reserve this for high school levels. This novel works well for the -2 levels, as it has a fairly large sized print which makes the text look more achievable. Other resources to use alongside this text are Hafiz, or Leonard Cohen's "Crack in Everything".
Litany - Billy Collins
A poem that Billy Collins "finished", as he started the poem with the two lines written by Jacques Crickillon: "You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine...". So the entire poem was stemmed off of a piece that wasn't originally his. This type of poem can be referred to as ekphrastic, which means poetry that borrows lines from another poem. You can use this as an example if you would like your students to write their own ekphrastic poetry.
This poem also works well with metaphors and imagery that uses every day objects. The speaker is referring to someone that he loves, and you can ask your students how they would represent someone that they love when only able to use plain everyday objects. This also shows the satirical nature of the poem, as it mocks how poets often refer to their loves in metaphors, but they are often much more graceful metaphors than the ones in this poem. You can represent the poem by itself, or show the students this video of a child who memorized the whole thing.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - Chris van Allsburg
This book has only an introduction, and then many large illustrations that are only accompanied by a title and a caption. The story behind these photos is that an author presented these photos, titles and captions as possible story ideas to a publisher but then disappeared, leaving the stories unwritten. These visuals with only a little bit of text to work with are fantastic story prompts, as you can ask your students to decipher the picture and text and write a story using all the information that you can find in your photo. You could also get your students to pick a photo and title seperately and make them work together. Another option is to get students back to back and ask one student to describe the photo while the other tries to draw it and then compare. This helps students work on their descriptive language. Could be used from grade five up.
Bruderkuss (photo)
This video can be used: to kick off community development, promote citizenship, as a pre-film study unit, to promote this kind of pleasantness in your students (random acts of kindness week?).
Stephanie's Ponytail - Robert Munsch
One of the most renowned Canadian authors for children's books, Robert Munsch uses this clever story to teach children about being unique and being their own person. He promotes the message that being unique is okay and if people are copying you then you should just take it as a complement. This larger social issue of conformity is made simplistic for children in this story, but you could also use it with Junior High students to show as a prompt for an assignment where they need to take a social issue and write about it in a way that makes it accessible to children (can use the idea of conformity, but also bullying, accepting other cultures, etc). The story can also be used to teach children about patterns in plot. There is repetition in Stephanie's style being copied by the kids, so as a teacher you could pause and ask students what they think will happen after Stephanie changes her hairstyle again.
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
A very serious post-apocalyptic novel that follows the journey of a man and his son as they try to survive in a hopeless world. The novel deals with some serious issues such as faith, love, humanity, cannibalism, and many more. The question that can prompt this novel could be: what makes you continue to live? Hope, spirituality of a person or higher being? What drives YOU?
Being such a heavy text as it is a depressing subject matter, I would reserve this for high school levels. This novel works well for the -2 levels, as it has a fairly large sized print which makes the text look more achievable. Other resources to use alongside this text are Hafiz, or Leonard Cohen's "Crack in Everything".
Litany - Billy Collins
A poem that Billy Collins "finished", as he started the poem with the two lines written by Jacques Crickillon: "You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine...". So the entire poem was stemmed off of a piece that wasn't originally his. This type of poem can be referred to as ekphrastic, which means poetry that borrows lines from another poem. You can use this as an example if you would like your students to write their own ekphrastic poetry.
This poem also works well with metaphors and imagery that uses every day objects. The speaker is referring to someone that he loves, and you can ask your students how they would represent someone that they love when only able to use plain everyday objects. This also shows the satirical nature of the poem, as it mocks how poets often refer to their loves in metaphors, but they are often much more graceful metaphors than the ones in this poem. You can represent the poem by itself, or show the students this video of a child who memorized the whole thing.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - Chris van Allsburg
This book has only an introduction, and then many large illustrations that are only accompanied by a title and a caption. The story behind these photos is that an author presented these photos, titles and captions as possible story ideas to a publisher but then disappeared, leaving the stories unwritten. These visuals with only a little bit of text to work with are fantastic story prompts, as you can ask your students to decipher the picture and text and write a story using all the information that you can find in your photo. You could also get your students to pick a photo and title seperately and make them work together. Another option is to get students back to back and ask one student to describe the photo while the other tries to draw it and then compare. This helps students work on their descriptive language. Could be used from grade five up.
Bruderkuss (photo)
A German photo, famous for being on the Berlin Wall and is now preserved in the East Side Gallery. It shows a kiss between two politicians, showing the public that you're proud to have each other as a friend. A kiss would occur between two people who felt this either on the cheek or on the lips. The picture could be given to you and you could add your own writing or meaning to the text. Caption the photo! It's also a good way to prompt a media unit and to show first impressions of what students would gather from this piece. For more information on the photograph, you can go here and then ask for it to be translated.
Patterns - Amy Lowell
A dated poem, dealing with gender and gendered roles and expectations of the time (late 1800's). Students can analyze and see how current issues were dealt with back then, and what has stayed the same or changed throughout time. A way to make poetry fun: dissect the poem into lines and cut them up, asking students to take two or three pieces of the poem and go around talking to other students, trying to piece together what they think the poem is about.
Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen - Baz Luhrmann
Patterns - Amy Lowell
A dated poem, dealing with gender and gendered roles and expectations of the time (late 1800's). Students can analyze and see how current issues were dealt with back then, and what has stayed the same or changed throughout time. A way to make poetry fun: dissect the poem into lines and cut them up, asking students to take two or three pieces of the poem and go around talking to other students, trying to piece together what they think the poem is about.
Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen - Baz Luhrmann
This inspirational music video from the nineties is the spoken word of a graduation speech giving advice to the graduating class. To show this to your students as advice alone to junior and senior high students is an amazing tool, but it can also be used as a curriculum tool in the classroom. You can use this as an introduction to film studies to show the use of framing in a music video and how images portray words. What images do you use to portray certain concepts? You could use this as a prompt to get students to give advice to their future or past selves. You could also get students to write a graduation speech to a different age level. Students could write their own ode, either to themselves or to something that they feel deserves an ode (this could also mimic the I Am Canadian beer commercial).
Where The Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
This classic tale can be used to teach children about self-discipline and personal responsibility. You can ask children if they can identify why Max's mom was upset with him and perhaps why Max should be sorry about what he did. This allows children to think about being sorry, yet does not target them to think about personal things they have done wrong. Puppets can be purchased for the characters, which would make this a fun way to act the story out to the class. It's most preferably a K-3 tool, and focuses on childhood and imagination. Students who can write better may also write about their emotions using prompts such as "When I feel sad I...." or "When I feel mad I..."
If using with older students you could make this a film study and get students to recognize how they adapted the book to the film version and why they made certain changes or portrayed elements in certain ways. This would make the book applicable all the way up to the high school level. There is also a song called Breezeblocks by Alt-j and it borrows some lines from the children's book. Students could analyze how the song fits with the plot elements of the book.
A Portrait of the Autist - Dan Bull
Where The Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
This classic tale can be used to teach children about self-discipline and personal responsibility. You can ask children if they can identify why Max's mom was upset with him and perhaps why Max should be sorry about what he did. This allows children to think about being sorry, yet does not target them to think about personal things they have done wrong. Puppets can be purchased for the characters, which would make this a fun way to act the story out to the class. It's most preferably a K-3 tool, and focuses on childhood and imagination. Students who can write better may also write about their emotions using prompts such as "When I feel sad I...." or "When I feel mad I..."
If using with older students you could make this a film study and get students to recognize how they adapted the book to the film version and why they made certain changes or portrayed elements in certain ways. This would make the book applicable all the way up to the high school level. There is also a song called Breezeblocks by Alt-j and it borrows some lines from the children's book. Students could analyze how the song fits with the plot elements of the book.
A Portrait of the Autist - Dan Bull
This piece is a song written by someone who as Aspergers syndrome and speaks about his everyday struggles. The lyrics for the song are in the video description box on youtube. This song works well for celebrating diversity and awareness of differences in the classroom with students, promoting the inclusive classroom. This will help students with community building and helps build a sense of empathy for their fellow classmates. Other pieces by Dan Bull deal with different controversial issues and could be used for other topics of discussion within the classroom.
Coca-Cola Security Cameras Commercial
Coca-Cola Security Cameras Commercial
This feel-good commercial shows the honesty of people when they do not know they are being filmed and can somewhat restore faith in humanity. Although this is a heartwarming commercial, students can also be prompted to view this as media awareness. This is still a commercial by a huge corporation, and what is this corporation saying about it's product through this commercial? This gets students critically thinking and involves new literacies and critical literacies in their thought process. Students can make their own commercials or videos though the website animoto, or they can work to create a pastiche piece to represent Random Acts of Kindness week.
Outliers - Malcom Gladwell
Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography - Sid Jacobson
The Breadwinner Series - Deborah Ellis
The Rough-faced Girl - Martin and Shannon
Being Wendy - Drescher
Madden 13 - Ray Lewis Trailer
Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography - Sid Jacobson
The Breadwinner Series - Deborah Ellis
The Rough-faced Girl - Martin and Shannon
Being Wendy - Drescher
Madden 13 - Ray Lewis Trailer