Response to Chapter 12

Over the past few days, I have spent much of my time glued to CNN trying to grasp the severity of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. These events do not fall short of utter tragedy and will undoubtedly be a historical turning point for Japan. As a teacher, I feel that it is my duty to inform my students about current events in ways in which they can understand. The more I have watched the news, the more I have wondered how I would incorporate these current events in my own classroom. This week’s readings gave me a great idea! I could create a unit of study on Japan and the events after March 10^th, 2011. The following is a rough draft of how I would incorporate this idea into a writing workshop unit of study.

Japan After March 10^th, 2011

• A study of our own lives and histories as writers: Students would document their feelings about what they learn throughout this unit in their writing journals. They could use the information they gather through videos and articles to write an informational piece about the events so that they can play the part of historians as well.
• A student of the gathering-from-the-world habits of various kinds of writers: poets, memoirist, fiction writers, essayists, and so on: Students could research and gather different types of written responses to the tsunami through genres other than newspaper articles.
• A study of how to conduct research for writing: Students would learn the basic research principles while learning about the tsunami and its devastation. Their reports on the events would give them practice in following this protocol.
• A study of how writers work with other writers, editors, and publishers: As a class, we could study how journalists gather their information and the process that their writing goes through before the public reads their work.
• A study of a specific genre: Depending on how vast I plan this project, the class could just study editorials and journalism or expand their horizons to picture books, poetry, or memoirs of Japanese writers who have experienced the earthquake and tsunami.
• Plus, I can use any article or poem relating to the disaster as a mentor text to teach focus lessons on any grammar detail that is an area of weakness in student writing.