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I am a middle school teacher with about a 10 years of experience in the classroom teaching Language Arts, History, and Humanities. I believe that by providing them with real connections between the curriculum and the world around us, students experience more ownership and authenticity in their learning. The answers to the perennial questions about why history, or any subject, is important can be found in the headlines, galleries, and voices that will be featured on this page.

Friday, August 20, 2010

What's on your hand? - Writing Brainstorm


So in 2010, this is type of lesson plan that will land you on Fox News or Drudge Report as more of an indoctrinator than an educator. However, I was struck by this image embedded in an article I had heard profiled on Fresh Air during an interview with it's author, Todd Purdum.

I was thinking that as a brainstorm for a personal essay, something we do early in the year as our first major writing piece, you could show the image, which is not biased at all but simply a list of the things on Obama's plate (or hand in this case) and ask the students to draw what is on their hands. Based on the sketch they do, they will be developing a list of writing areas to access later in the year and perhaps a nice artistic rendering of what is going on in their lives.

I think I am going to do it as one of my first journal writes.

The illustration is by Barry Blitt and appears in the September issue of Vanity Fair.

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