Sabrina, Future Teacher

For this week, I chose to read the graphic novel Maus. I learned about this book years ago during a history class, and have been interested in reading it ever since, due to a combination of a love for graphic novels and curiosity about this format for such a serious topic. I would use this book to connect students to what is going on in the world right now (the community aspect would be the global community) with the refugee crisis. At the end of the book, I would ask the students how they would react if they discovered a refugee family wanted to move into the house or apartment next to them. Would they welcome them? Would they be afraid? What if the child of the family went to the school? What if they experienced prejudice from their classmates? In the end, I would likely have the students write a letter to this refugee family, finding a way to explain their fears or excitement at them coming to live next door.

For the book Fever 1793 , I would have my students write response logs and I would have them find Golden Lines.  Response Log I would have these ongoing throughout the book, and my students would be encouraged to focus on several things: most importantly, how the book makes them feel. This book is full of high emotional content and some disturbing events. I would have my students write down times when they were feeling strongly emotional and why they think that is. I would want them to copy down lines from the text that were especially evocative and use those to articulate what they are feeling and why; I would have the students remark on their thoughts and impressions of the characters. The book, being written in first person, has a strong bias to the main character's view of the world and of the other characters. I would have the students make comparisons between how characters are described and how they actually think the characters appear - I would suggest that they use the ...

I chose to investigate the following four discussion strategies: Pose-Pause-Bounce-Pounce, Golden Lines, Question Wall, and Response Logs. 1. PPBP Upon an initial Google search, I happened across a Guardian article from 2011 about this very strategy and how it was rolled out to the author by one of his colleagues. He lauds the strategy for fostering dialogue and critical thinking, as a new way to open discussions. The steps should occur as follows: Pose - the teacher poses an open question for the purpose of encouraging dialogue. Students are instructed to keep their hands down, and instead of answering right away or before the question is even completely posed, they are directed to Pause - and think. They are given a considerable time to think about their immediate answer, and reflect on how to produce this answer, to fill out the nuances and hit all areas of the question. When reflection has gone on for as long as the teacher feels is necessary, she picks one student to Bounce - ...

decreed (pg 97) - past tense of the verb decree, to make a rule absentmindedly (pg 98) - without thinking or paying attention symmetrical (pg 99) - the same on both sides eaves (pg 100) - the overhanging, lower edge of a roof endeavor (pg 100) - a task, especially a time-consuming or ambitious one rifling (pg 101) - digging through foraging (pg 101) - searching for valuable items

Min and Tree Ear discuss Kang's pottery. Min sends Tree Ear to get red and white clay. Tree Ear drains the clay. Min throws the clay, practices the new technique. Min sees Tree Ear's drainage work. Min finishes 5 pieces of pottery. Min brings the pieces to the kiln. Min and Tree Ear wait for the pottery to fire. Min and Tree Ear take the pieces out, take them to Min's home, and Tree Ear goes home. Tree Ear asks Crane Man about his life. They go to sleep. Tree Ear goes to Min's house, speaks to Min's wife. Tree Ear finds smashed pottery in the yard. Tree Ear picks up a piece, cuts his hand.

I made two connections to this chapter that were meaningful to me personally.  In the book, Tree Ear praises Min's work highly in his mind, and notes that Min's pieces seem to be alive, as if they would leap off the market stand. This reminds me of the potter in Ella Enchanted, a gnome named Agulen who makes pottery that is so lifelike as to appear alive.  The other connection I made was to Greek pottery - I took a Classical Art and Architecture class in undergraduate, and the Greeks had a technique for making poetry that was either red-figures on a black background or black figures on a red background. There was a specific way to get either style, but it made a similar effect to Kang's pottery with the black and red inlay work. The Greeks also did inlay work on a variety of their artwork - pottery, metals, jewelry, and many other things.  I think it is fascinating that artwork in far-removed places might turn out to have similarities. The Koreans and the Greeks had li...

This is an image of what a plum branch in a vase (not quite a prunus vase, but close) would look like. This is the combination that made Tree Ear long to craft his own vase. This was his dream. This is what Kang's vase would have looked like - with the red and white slip inlaid with the celadon. His slip turned black, but this is a very close example.

For this chapter, I chose to do some research on celadon, to better understand how it fit historically into Korean and Chinese market systems. It appears that, true to the novel, Korean celadon was prized in Imperial China as much as Chinese celadon. The techniques really were different enough to justify specifying where the pottery comes from. It turns out that a specific province of Korea was famous for inventing a technique that was not known in China, and therefore made these pieces of pottery highly valuable to Chinese royals. There is more information on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website . I also researched Korean expressions of respect, which were slightly discussed in this chapter and throughout the book, and many of those mentioned are still in practice to this day. For example, bowing is still a common form of respect, though shaking hands has also become more popular with the proliferation of Western culture. Eye contact between an inferior and superior is consi...

If you were in Tree-Ear's position, would you have gone back to Min's? What do you think is the significance of Min's wife being compared to Crane-Man? What do you think Tree-Ear will do differently to take care of Crane-Man? What do you think he should do? Do you think Min needs Tree-Ear more than Tree-Ear needs Min? What about Crane-Man and Tree-Ear? Explain all answers, use text evidence to prove your ideas.

Tree-Ear, a scavenger in a Korean village from the 12th century, has entered into a contract with a master potter in the village, the one he admires the most. He entered into this contract after he broke a beautiful piece of pottery and felt guilty for ruining the work, despite the fact that the potter would have let him go. Tree-Ear, who greatly admires the art of making pottery, had hoped that Min, the potter, would teach him how to make the same masterful creations, but his first day of indentured work proves that Min has some very different tasks in mind for the boy.

When I saw that one of the options for this assignment was A Single Shard, I was very intrigued, because my students were assigned an excerpt from this book as one of their test preparation assignments. They had to compare the author's view of a potter in this excerpt versus the poem Kéramos by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was not an easy task for them, but it did pique my interest in this book.  For each literary circle role, I chose a chapter of the book to focus on. For some chapters, this was a very easy tasks. For others, it was not as easy, so please bear with me as I attempt to make these roles work.