Thoughts on my first lesson plan

These things are HARD!

I am currently working on my first ever lesson plan for the aforementioned C&I class, and it is way more difficult than I initially anticipated.  The main problem for me, I think, is the goal of the lesson.  I have an idea about the texts I want to use and connections I want to make, but now I am struggling with the actual goals I want the students to accomplish at the end of the lesson.  I wish I had known about Backwards Planning before I came up with my idea for the texts I wanted to use.

It is interesting, however, to think about the evolution of my idea even over the course of two or three days.  The initial impetus for my lesson was the article I found, Songs That Teach: Using Song-Poems to Teach Critically, by James R. Carlson, wherein he speaks of using Bob Dylan songs (among others) as alternate texts with which to aid the students in meaning-making.  While I don't have the time in the scope of this particular assignment to utilize the songs in the same way that Carlson does, I did appreciate the concept of using songs (and accompanying lyrics) as a way of engaging the students by providing them with an alternate view of text.  In the article, Carlson used Dylan's, "The Death of Emmett Till," to further the discussion of two books that his students had read.  He further tied it into the concept of artistic/stylistic choice and the fallibility of sources. 

This is an incredible amount of information and I feel that I can absolutely do that sort of thing...when I have an entire year to work with.  One of the problems I am confronting is scaling back my idea.  At the beginning, I was planning on using "John Henry" by Johnny Cash and wanted to tie that into the Monomyth and how it relates to American Folklore and our folk heroes as extensions of the Classic heroes.  Oh, and I wanted to extend it to the connections of various versions of the same song and how our ideas and stories change and evolve over time...all in a 15 minute presentation.  I guess I can't be blamed for being unambitious!

I have since scaled back to using, "John Henry" as an introduction and alternate text relating to Man vs. Machine, and tying that in with an excerpt from an as yet to be determined short story by Isaac Asimov in I, Robot.  The connection will hopefully be Man vs Machine and Man vs Technology and how two authors in two mediums can approach the same theme, but with very different results, very different texts, and very different viewpoints.  This could also tie into a broader lesson arc of the continuing struggle of Man vs. Machine across the ages of literature (every advance in technology has detractors and proponents, and every advance is heralding the downfall of society etc etc).

See.  Even when I scale it back, I run into the problem of all of these ideas floating in my head to connect this to this to that, and nowhere is there a state standard in sight.  I've even decided on the fact that I want to do a prereading exercise, but again, without a standard or goal to shoot for, there's no way to choose a strategy.

I'll check back in tomorrow night, and by then I'll definitely have a lesson plan to share.  I promise.