As a wily old veteran, I've come to know that if I enmesh students' musical interests to an assignment, I'll most likely hook them and solve the engagement conundrum.
I've been making a ton of content over the last week (big creative downloads), but I'd like to share this quasi-two birds, one stone assignment.
- My students and I did a straight-up rhetorical analysis of Nick Hornby's fantastic essay entitled "Thunder Road" - a wonderful expose of Springsteen's classic tune.
- We also wrote our own personal narrative song reflections in the same manner as Hornby. In brief, kids got to choose any song that has provided an important soundtrack to their life. In my model, I went classic 1990s (Toad the Wet Sprocket "Something's Always Wrong").
In the writing workshop video, I "Bob Ross" how to do both components.
Don't know what it is about music ... but students seem to do their best work when I incorporate it into our studies.
Or as one wise man once said: "One good thing about music ... when it hits you feel okay!"
Happy teaching and happy writing!
0 comments