focus

My students are reading books with tragic heroes and writing literary papers on those heroes. I'm using a variety of focus activities to help them with the task.

Students are to write a literary paper on a tragic hero. They had five to choose from. We began by reading as a group a book with a tragic hero and using him as an example for discussion of the tragic hero traits. This also acted as scaffolding for students with more trouble in reading and comprehending. Now as they begin reading on their own, I'm giving them focus questions to answer at the end of each chapter: Write a brief summary of the chapter. Note evidence for any of the tragic hero traits that appears in that chapter. Write down any quotes that would help to explain one of the traits in your paper. (I modeled this using one of the chapters from the book we read as a group.) In addition, we will use focus groups, with students who are doing their papers on the same character meeting to discuss ideas and findings.

So far it's working quite well. During the discussion of the group book, they became so familiar with the concepts that they began suggesting characters from other books and films who display the traits. It's too long a project for me to give a complete reflection before the end of the nine weeks, but I think all this has given them the background and the skills to do well.