The Modern Legends sub-unit within the Legends unit started on Friday. Normally I am adverse to starting anything new on a Friday because you lose two days between the lessons, and the students will hardly remember what you did never mind what you're studying. The reading block also happens to be the last period of the day. But this actually worked to me advantage as I wanted to start the unit by reading aloud a "Modern Legend" that just so happens to be a favorite of mine: Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone.
Of course I knew I could never read aloud the whole book, so I picked a chapter that I thought would work best. Chapter 16, or Through the Trapdoor, is a great example of a modern legend, and it also makes a great read aloud. The students were actively engaged; the chapter is chock-full of humor and suspense, and it an example of how much more entertaining the book is than the movie. Hermione's wit and Ron's sarcasm are a language my students understand, and Harry's determination lends to a lot of intense moments, and a lot of groans. If ever you think that a group of TV-watching, computer hacking, 21st century kids could never be entertained by a book, well, you're probably just not reading a good enough book.
On Monday we finished the last page or so of the chapter and jumped right into our legends WS. As a testament to their own engagement the students needed no help filling in the details about what had happened during the chapter, and many of them had things they could add from their knowledge of the book or, yes, the movie.
The legends worksheet was done in five minutes, and we moved on to the meatier part of the lesson. Because of how uncertain I was around the time each portion of the lesson would take, I actually wrote the whole, from reading HP to writing paragraphs about our own favorite modern legends as one unit. This gave me a lot of freedom in timing, so I never felt the need to rush the students.
The point of the modern legends unit, besides introducing to the kids to the concept of new legends, is to help them develop the skills needed for writing an argumentative paragraph. So following the legends WS I introduced them to a graphic organizer that they could use to form their argument. The worksheet is simple: one "topic sentence" box, three, small, "key point" boxes beside it, and branching off each of those boxes, a large "details" box. And at the bottom of the page, another box to write in your concluding sentence.
I knew, having read a lot of their other paragraphs, that the kids were going to really have to be walked through how to construct a good paragraph. The topic sentence itself took almost 10 minutes to construct, as we needed to talk about making sure it encompassed the whole argument, had details, didn't give away all the details, and, you know, made grammatical sense.
With the help of almost everyone in the class we managed to construct the sentence, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone is a legend because it meets the criteria of one." Short, simple, to the point, and with a little bit of detail.
From there we decided on the conventions to use: The Hero(es), The Adventure, and The Magic. Lastly, using the legends WS, we picked out details that we might wish to include for each of these conventions.
The next day was the day of constructing our paragraph. Again this was a process that took almost a half hour, as we argued about word choice and details, and discussed transition words and phrases, topic sentences, and concluding sentences. Again the students were engaged, and our work was almost more like a conversation than a dictation. I believe heavily in making sure that the students are always doing something, and in making things novel to them. Structuring the intro to the paragraph creation as a "We" and a "create" rather than a "watch me write" keeps the students thinking and the ideas flowing. And of course we were using the Mimio (similar to a smartboard) for the first time in class, so every stroke of the stylus was an amazing feat. Here is the paragraph we constructed:
The parts that are highlighted each correspond to a paragraph convention: topic and concluding sentence, transitions, details, and indents, as a student pointed out at last minute. The act of highlighting the details was the most exciting for the class, as up until that moment they weren't even aware that the pen color could change. It also served to help my visual learners by allowing them to see the parts, rather than just learn them. And it proved effective, as I was to learn in their next assignment.
The photo at the top of this post is the list of possible modern legends that the students dictated to me. (The fancy words were my decoration at the beginning of class to try and entice the students). The last part of the modern legends unit was having the students replicate, on their own, the process of writing an argumentative paragraph about whether X is or is not a legend. This served as another form of assessment for the students; testing their knowledge of the conventions of a legend, as well as their skills in constructing a paragraph. To get them started we created a list of possible modern legends, and then passed out the legends worksheet.
The teachers in the room carefully watched everything they did. Nobody could get their graphic organizer until they had conferred with a teacher about their legends worksheet, and demonstrated their ability to pull details from the text. Likewise, no student could start their paragraph until they had a solid topic sentence and argument. Teachers made note along the way of what students needed help when and with what part, which meant that completing the paragraph wasn't even as necessary as getting through the graphic organizer. So at the end of class, whether students had finished or not, I collected their work.
Though we haven't done anything since, the students just don't know that there is more to the unit. The next and last part serves as the final assessment, as well as a chance for me to leave the kids with some more technical and artistic skills. We're going to create digital storybooks using our own legends.
