Rationale

This unit should be taught to adolescents because it would expose them to the hero’s journey, an essential theme that is bound to arise in future works, from classic literature to modern culture. Not everyone enjoys fantasy as a genre, but most students should be able to relate to a journey that they have embarked on and encountered some difficulties. J. R. R. Tolkein’s //The Hobbit// is a great, contemporary example of a character’s transformation from being humdrum to extraordinary. This unit would show students the fundamental components constituting a hero’s journey. It would demonstrate the progression and maturation of a mundane character who begins in and returns to his ordinary world, having been exposed to difficult tasks and tribulations in an unknown world of bizarre events. It would show how the character changed his individuality in the progress and gained newfound knowledge. The theme of the hero’s journey is depicted in a contemporary novel making it applicable to students’ lives. The text would help students relate to a character who starts out as an average, uneventful being and flourishes into an adventure-seeking hero. Because “few teenagers identify themselves as ‘heroes’ or make the connection between their own messy lives and a hero’s journey, [some] prompting [has to be done]” (Jago 86). Similar to a “coming of age” novel, //The Hobbit// demonstrates a character’s psychological growth. Rather than progressing through puberty in a “coming of age” text, the main character, Bilbo Baggins, a sheltered, conservative hobbit, develops into a courageous, adventure-seeker after making complicated decisions that influence his life. He develops a new understanding of himself, one that improves his self-image, self-esteem, and individuality. Thus, the hero’s journey becomes a universal topic, one that is relevant to all ages and to multiple situations. The hero’s journey is a constant pattern seen throughout different media types. By introducing students to this concept and the elements that constitute the hero’s journey, students would be able to recognize other forms of heroes’ journeys. Doing so will help students construct the plot’s storyline in a particular way that allows them to foreshadow events more accurately and read the text more engagingly and analytically. By understanding how the genre is constructed, students would be able to predict a change that would happen by the novel’s conclusion. This would build excitement for the reader, encouraging him or her to read further along to see if his or her prediction was accurate. Exposing students to the hero’s journey would help them tell stories, oral or written, in a more clear and concise way. Knowing the elements of the hero’s journey would assist students in creating their own hero’s journeys. They could transform their everyday lives into stories of epic proportions. The Unit will be organized around the structural aspect of genre, particularly the hero’s journey. This will “help students understand the structural and formal components of [hero’s journey]” (TLA 57). Students will be able to examine the elements of this genre, specifically the growth and maturation of character. “One advantage of a genre approach is that students learn a larger literacy practice of making generalizations about similarities between different texts based on certain genre features” (TLA 58). The unit will also be organized around production and writing of genres. Students will have opportunities to write their own narratives based on this genre. They will be able to relate their background knowledge of hero’s journey to create their own works. Big ideas that will be supported include the idea of the “hero,” the hero’s journey and the exploration of this genre through Tolkein’s //The Hobbit//, the relation of this genre to other texts, character development, rules of the world, and the subject of intended audience. These ideas combined will help scaffold students’ learning about the hero’s journey. These ideas will be supported through our individual lessons. We expect our ninth grade students to be able to understand the concept of hero’s journey and be able to apply it to multiple texts. This corresponds to the ninth grade literary analysis strand of the Sunshine State Standards that states that “students will… identify the relationships among the major genres (e.g., poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short story, dramatic literature, essay) and the literary devices unique to each, and analyze how they support and enhance the theme and main ideas of the text.” Students are expected to identify, examine, and relate the elements found in a particular genre to a variety of works. According to the Sunshine State Standards, these expectations would be deemed reasonable because they are also the expectations set by Florida Department of Education. The plan for introducing the unit and its concepts on the first day is to first make sure students understand terms in the text that are crucial to their understanding of the book. In order to do so, students will be given a word and asked with what they associate that word. After all words have been mentioned, they will engage in a writing roulette activity, in which they create a journey using words on the board. They will be guided into their first sentence by completing the phrase, “There once was a ____ who…”. Each student will use a vocabulary word in a sentence and pass their essay to the person next to them. Their neighbor will add to the journey by writing their own sentence using another vocabulary word. After all words have been used, students will be returned their essays and asked to volunteer to read their stories out loud. This lesson will introduce the text they are about to read and the idea of “journey.” The purpose was to not “to take the cod liver approach: ‘Drink this. It tastes bad but it’s good for you. You’ll thank me later” (Jago 10).This activity was chosen as part of the introductory lesson because it is a part of “being out and stepping into the envisionment” process (Langer). Students would be making “initial contacts with the genre, content, structure, and language of the text by using prior knowledge, experiences, and surface features of the text to "identify" essential elements in order to begin to construct an envisionment” (Langer). This unit is supported by a sociocultural community; a community in which “students assume the identities of careful readers who acquire various practices involved in interpreting and producing literature” (TLA 6). This community values literary analysis because it requires students to participate in “joint, collective activity” that is monitored, modeled, and scaffolded to aid in student understanding. Thus, students will be engaged in situated practice that is framed via overt instruction. The text that is to be used in this unit is a tool that will serve to connect students with other tools, such as language, writing, talk, digital media, and art work, in order to explore the practices necessary for interpreting and creating literature. According to Vygotsky, these tools “are used to achieve certain purposes or outcomes of activities” (TLA 17). The purpose for our unit is analyzing the elements of a particular genre to apply to other narratives for critical readings. In order to introduce students to this unit, overt instruction needs to be used to describe and explain the elements of hero’s journey. Students will not be taught “how to read, but rather…about how stories work [because] withholding information about how a story works may make it impossible for some students to have any response at all” (Jago 39). Thus, by overtly examining the structure of this genre, students will be able to apply these reading skills to different texts, whether they are in the form of short stories, novellas, or films. Throughout the unit, students will need to pay particular attention to the main character’s development and progress. Students will need to apply Rabinowtiz’s rules of notice for character. There will be many activities requiring students to pay particular attention to the character’s problems, actions, and beliefs in order to analyze character change. According to Rabinowitz, “changes in a character are always important! If a character changes it is for a reason and the author wants us to figure out what the reason is. This will probably have something to do with the author’s generalization or theme of the story” (Rabinowitz). This unit is related to effective teaching of reading and writing because it consistently relates the overarching genre to the individual activities and lessons throughout the unit. It requires students to apply what they have learned in the text to writing. The instructional unit we will plan will be focused on genre, specifically the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is a pattern seen repeatedly in different types of text ranging from 14th century Chaucer to 21st century //Up//. The hero’s journey comes in parts. It is a useful framework for breaking the story down into smaller pieces. The major weakness that comes with this approach is that “students can easily tire of continuous study of one genre; it can seem somewhat forced and artificial” (TLA 57). To mitigate this problem, we are only using genre as an overall framework – it is not the single focus of our instruction. We will also be focusing on working to understand alternate points of view, the rules of the universe, and character development. These running themes will be approached from many angles. The genre approach is not singular. We will also use a variety of different types of experiences to take away from student boredom. We will utilize art, drama, writing, and collaborative work to explore multiple issues within the text. We will pull ideas from multiple literary practices, such as constructing social worlds and making connections, but the practice we will focus on most is explaining characters’ actions. Throughout the lessons, we will scaffold students to pay particular attention to character traits, motives, goals, and beliefs. Overt instruction will explicitly examine these factors. Scaffolding will connect them to students’ background knowledge. Students’ understandings of character actions will be developed when they apply what they learned from overt instruction to the text. By analyzing these factors and applying them to the text in situated practice in order to determine character actions, students will be able to recognize these patterns when they come across them again in different texts. Situated practice will help prepare students for analyzing future texts. Several opportunities arise for generative thinking in our lessons. These opportunities will allow students to make connections with the text and develop their own ideas and reasoning that delve deeper than the superficial layer of the text. Opportunities such as writing from other points of view would allow students to take the stance of Bilbo’s relative and notice the differences in Bilbo when he returns from his journey. Students would have to develop an explanation of the standards and expectations of Bilbo’s community and family from the evidence they gathered in the text. Another opportunity would be when students are choosing what is important out of the book to include in their wiki. They will have plenty of opportunities to pull from their background knowledge and apply it to what they are being introduced. Generative thinking will be required for when they have to create a graphic organizer of their family traits and explain which traits would help them transform into an epic hero. Overt instruction will used during the times when students are grouped for discussion. We will walk to each group, guiding students who are having mental roadblocks, and addressing students’ concerns. We will model the skills we are asking our students to demonstrate by providing examples that would mimic their activities. Overt instruction will be used to lead class discussions. Guiding questions would be framed in such a way that would “tease out from students an understanding of how the story is structured” (Jago 40). Overt instruction will also be used to introduce new concepts and specify instructions so students are not lost. Anything other than direct instruction in these situations would leave students confused as to what is expected from them. Students will be given situated practice when they form groups to engage in activities that we had just previously modeled. They will be given time in class to apply what they learned to the directions of the activity. Situated practice activities would be carefully selected on specific material. Our selection of //The Hobbit// is highly appropriate for our audience because it appeals not only to their interest in fantasy and adventure, but is also a classic text of high literary quality. The main character, Bilbo Baggins, appeals to students because he is initially someone ordinary that they can identify with, yet he becomes someone extraordinary. His journey may seem fantastic, but it has elements that students will be able to personally relate to, such as experiencing the start of a new journey – whether that journey be significant move, a year in school, the transition from middle school to high school, or any of the other many possible iterations within student life.
 * Why this unit should be taught to adolescents?**
 * 2. What big ideas the unit will support. How will you organize the Unit? Why? (See Chapter 3 in //TLA//)**
 * 3. How learning expectations are related to grade-level expectations (see FLDOE Website or SSS), a plan for introducing the unit and its concepts on the first day (this is what you will present in class).**
 * 4. How this unit is connected to developing skills of reading literature (Langer, //TLA//, Jago, Rabinowitz, Vygotsky, Teaching Methods—Overt instruction, situated practice, critical framing, etc)**
 * 5. How this unit and your instructional plans are related to effective teaching of reading and writing.**
 * What type of instructional unit will you plan? (Why? How will you deal with the weaknesses of this approach?)**
 * What literacy practices will you support, teach, develop? (why)**
 * What opportunities for generative thinking will you provide in your lessons? (refer to specific examples in the individual units)**
 * What will be the content of Overt Instruction? (Why?) //Remember that OI includes facilitating learning and literacy practices.//**
 * What will be the nature of Situated Practice? (connections between students' existing understandings and academic skills and practices)**
 * The Five Techniques**:

Our sequencing of lessons is based on first getting students accustomed to the hero’s journey, as that is a framework that will continue throughout the unit. We begin with an activity based on both writing about journeys, and about connecting to the types of unfamiliar characters that will appear in Tolkien’s work. We then move to a lesson specifically dedicated to the hero’s journey to ensure that students are given a solid foundation in it. As we get into the unit, we gradually add in activities that will run throughout, such as the character development timeline of Bilbo Baggins. We stagger the introduction of these activities so that students do not become overwhelmed, and we begin with the experiences of Bilbo and how they affect him because they are a central part of understanding the hero’s journey. To understand what the hero gains, or how he progresses through the stages, we must first establish an understanding of the hero. We also progress carefully through first showing them our version of the activity, then having them negotiate their own interpretations in small groups, before finally allowing them to begin interpreting the text on their own.

We immerse students in the text through a series of envisionment activities that run throughout our entire unit, as well as through activities that explicitly connect material to their own lives. Students will have the opportunity to create family trait trees and to consider where their personality traits come from, creating a connection between their own experiences and how Bilbo constantly thinks of his Baggins and Took sides. This connection between the life experience of our students and their work with the text will continue until the end of the unit through various journaling quick writes and ending in an activity about the expectations and standards of their communities and social cliques. Students will have the opportunity to show off their work in a cooperative environment throughout the unit, but the highlight of their demonstration will be through creating a class wiki of creative work that can be viewed by both the students and their families. By doing this we give them both a sense of purpose, and a specific audience for which to create work.

We will facilitate our lessons through giving students assignments related to our overall goals of the unit, and to their understanding of the text, and by making sure that we make the reasoning behind those assignments explicit so that students can know when they have accomplished the desired goals as well as evaluate their own work.

We will consistently model new activities and stances by providing students with examples of our own work and interpretations. If we ask students to accomplish something unfamiliar, we will first provide them with an example of how we would personally accomplish it, as we do with the initial character development exercise. Students will then be allowed to negotiate their own ways through the assignment in small groups and individually depending on the occasion. They may feel challenged at first, but a combination of peer collaboration, and of teacher intervention (as necessary) should serve students well.

We will orient students to our desired classroom environment by consistently maintaining an approachable manner, by using a style of teaching true to our beliefs about teaching and learning, and by treating students with respect and consideration – even when put on the spot. By fostering our own good behavior and constructive contribution to a healthy classroom environment, we simultaneously model for students how they too should behave, as we “can most effectively orient students as much through how you operate in the classroom as through direct, deliberate modeling” (TLA 54). We also orient students to specific academic and interpretive stances by modeling our own use of those stances, as when we provide examples of our personal analysis of character development at the beginning of our character development timeline.

We will also reflect on our lessons after we teach them, and after viewing formative assessment to assess the strengths of weaknesses of our approach and how we can alter our lessons in the future. To that end, we will incorporate numerous opportunities for formative assessment such as when we walk through the class during group discussions, and also through our observation of journaling quick writes that we will glance through periodically to determine student comprehension. We will also encourage students to discuss what elements of the text they find challenging so that we may adjust for those difficulties as we progress.

These factors are all important to student learning and comprehension, as well as to maintaining a positive classroom environment. By paying attention to these aspects of instruction during the creation of our lessons, as well as in our reflection after the execution of our lessons, we can best adjust our lessons to meet student needs. No teacher is perfect, and we won’t always execute these ideals in the way we hope, but by maintaining a practice of reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of our lessons we can constantly work at becoming stronger teachers. Our understanding of these premises and the desired foundations of our unit can only help us as we negotiate the best way to achieve optimal learning in a positive environment.