Yoo-nit plannin'

My subject area is English. Randi and I met last week and came up with many ideas for our project. We both agreed that a common theme should connect all of our lessons in the unit since one of our goals is that our students should learn to identify such themes across a span of literary works. We brainstormed a couple and settled-for now-on "Choices and Consequence." Luckily we have similar tastes in literature. Some ideas for class reading: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"; Camus' "The Guest"; Franz Kafka's In The Penal Colony; Shakespeare's Hamlet or Othello (or really any Shakespeare play); etc. Some films: "Schindler's List"; "The 25th Hour";"Click"; "Memento"; "Oedipus Rex"; "Othello"; "Hamlet"; etc. We discussed how this theme is relevant to civics and democracy and came up with some key questions: Does making choices mean making compromises? (what is a compromise?) Is there a downside to having a freedom of choice? How much personal freedom of choice should people be allowed? How can this create problems in a growing society? etc. Students will keep in-class writing journals, learn vocab relevant to this topic, participate in group assignments that require role assignments and outside research, and possibly have an assignment that requires them to bring in music lyrics that involve this theme.