Schedule for English 4950

First Class
Discuss Syllabus

Two Views on Reading (ppt)

Homework: Pleasures, Chs. 1 & 2 (pp. 1-29)
Complete MBTI Personality Inventory. Print out results and bring to class.

Discuss Reading Strategies & "Pleasure"

Activity: Literacy Map

Homework: Pleasures, Ch. 5 (pp. 79-107); finish the Literacy Map assignment and bring it to class.

Discuss Assumptions about Childhood, Adult Anxieties, Etc.
Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak)

Activity: Experiences with Children

Homework: Pleasures, Ch. 7 (pp. 128-150)
After reading Nodelman and Reimer's chapter, write a two-page response in which you discuss some artifact of childhood (your own or of current childhood) that you think says something about how adults understand children/childhood. Justify your artifact in the same ways that Nodelman and Reimer do in Chapter 7 by explaining its "meaning" to you and to our larger culture.

Discuss Children's Culture

Activity: Marketing Childhood/Children: Images, Imagination, Imago
Gendered Computing (ppt - created by Traci Gardner)
Janelle Brown, "Will a Barbie Computer Make Math Easy?"
Jeff Peline, "Barbie, Hot Wheels PC Deliver Lags in Holiday Crunch"
Lois J. Smith, "A Content Analysis of Gender Differences in Children's Advertising"
Blog Discusses Little Debbie "My Girl" Ad
Blog Loves the Little Debbie "My Girl" Ad
CNN: "Darth Tater: The Dark Side of Mr. Potato Head"

Homework: Pleasures, Ch. 12 (pp. 274-301)
Molly Bang's Picture This

Discuss Picture Books and Art Theory
Discuss Major Project #1

Activity: Picture Books and Art (Harlem, Wings, Where the Wild Things Are, Golem, Tar Beach)

Homework: Weisner's The Three Pigs. Begin working on Major Project #1.

Discuss The Three Pigs
Discuss MBTI and Preferential Learning
Discuss Book Reviews (Example 1, Example 2)

Activity: Art, Other, Me: Or, What I Get from Drawing a Tree
Activity: The Three Pigs: Conservative, Progressive, Hybrid?

Homework: Now that we've discussed what the MBTI means and how art and pictures can create meaning through psychological as well as sociological registers, write a two page response in which you discuss a picture book you're very fond of. Try to think about why you like it and how your liking the book (pictures, text, both) might reflect something about your personality/life preferences.
Continue working on Major Project #1

Discuss Picture Books

Teacher Share: Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown
Activity: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (creative writing)

Homework: Draft Due of Major Project #1 (which means you should have definitely decided on a poem and begun parsing the text by page and thinking through what illustrations you want to accompany the words)

Discuss Picture Books

Activity 1: "Me, a Princess?"
Activity 2: Share drafts of Major Project #1 (which means you should have at leat half the project completed)

Eric Carle on The Today Show (Fast-Internet/Broadband) (Slow-Internet/Dial-Up)

Homework: Pleasures, Ch 8 (pp. 151 - 183)
Make a list of situations/ideas/beliefs/people/etc. that you believe would be difficult to bring up or talk about with young children in a school setting.

Discuss Picture Books: "Difficult" Texts

Teacher Read: Old Turtle

Activity: Race, Culture, and Censorship: Who Has the "Right" to Certain Texts/Ideas?
(Texts to Consider: Flossie & the Fox, Nappy Hair, Happy to Be Nappy, Our Gracie Aunt, Black and White, In the Night Kitchen)

Relevant Links:
Censored Children's Books
Banned Books
EducationWorld: "Harry Potter and the Censored Tome"
Rethinking Schools Online: "The Real Ebonics Debate"
Sergio Gregario: "An Analysis of Media Coverage of Ebonics"
African American Vernacular English: A Resource Page
Michelle Martin: "Never Too Nappy"

Discuss Picture Books: "Difficult" Texts

Activity #1: Watch clips from It's Elementary & Discuss Relevant Picture Books
(Texts to Condsider: The Sissy Duckling, Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy's Roommate, A Family ABC, Oliver Buttons Is a Sissy, King & King)

Activity #2: Share Drafts of Major Project #1 (you should have finished at least half of the book, text and pictures)

Homework: Continue Major Project #1
Pleasures, Ch 13 (pp. 302-329)

Discuss Fairy Tales

Activity #1:Share Major Project #1
Activity #2: Cultural Reproduction & the Fairy Tale

Due: Major Project #1

Homework: Read "The Little Mermaid"
Write a two-page response to the book, detailing how the fairy tale differs from versions you're more familiar with (like Disney's cartoon). Did this version "shock" you or "surprise" you? Why?

Discuss "The Little Mermaid"

Activity: Lacan, Desire, and the Object Petite A

Homework: Read Peter Pan
As you read Peter Pan, think about how this text constructs "childhood" and "desire." According to this text, what is childhood? What does it look like? What are its properties? And what is desire in the novel? What does Peter desire? What does Wendy desire? Mr and Mrs Darling? Hook? How does Mrs. Darling manage her children's desires?

Discuss Peter Pan

Homework: If you were to teach Peter Pan to children, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss Peter Pan

Activity: Share teaching ideas about Peter Pan

Homework: Read Poppy
As you read, think about how this "beast fable" works. What characters are the child reader supposed to like? Why? How do you know? Part of what makes any "beast fable" work is the way that the text anthropomorphizes the animals. Why do we do that? How does it happen in this text? (Those who have read Winnie the Pooh or The House at Pooh Corner will recognize how those "animals" are each given a particular human ethos.)

Discuss Poppy

Homework: If you were to teach Poppy to children, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss Poppy

Activity: "Teaching" Poppy
Feminism in Books for Children

Homework: Pleasures, Ch. 11 (251-273)
For class on Tuesday, bring your favorite children's poem (perhaps a Shel Silverstein or a Jack Prelutsky?). We'll spend Tuesday looking at poetry for written for children.

Discuss Poetry for Children

Activity: Sharon Olds' Love That Dog

NO CLASS: You've worked so hard; take today off, catch up on reading, writing and other work you're doing.

Homework: For Tuesday after Spring Break, write a 2 - 3 page response in which you contrast the way that Tuck Everlasting and Peter Pan deal with the theme of "immortality" and childhood. In both texts, a character will or two will be (to quote Rod Stewart) "forever young." How do these texts handle that theme differently? Why might they?

!!!Spring Break!!!

Discuss Tuck Everlasting

Homework: If you were to teach Tuck Everlasting to children, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss The Watsons

Homework: If you were to teach Holes to children/young adults, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss Holes

Activity: Today, we'll have a guest in class from Winston Elementary school in Winston, GA. Mr. Darien Carruth will join our discussion of Holes, a book he has taught in 2nd and 3rd grade with tremendous success.

Homework: If you were to teach Holes to children/young adults, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss Holes

Guest Professor: Dr. Laureen Tedesco will discuss Holes.

Discuss So Hard to Say

Activity: Recap Holes
Activity: Stereotypes (Race/Sexuality)
Activity: Constructing the Course Portfolio

Homework: If you were to teach So Hard to Say to children/young adults, what sort of activity might you create? How would you use the book? Make a few notes in your book and be prepared to share those in small group at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Discuss So Hard to Say

Major Project #2 Due for Peer/Instructor Review

Peer Review Groups on Major Project #2

Homework: For our last class, bring your chart of the books we've read and what's positive/negative about each text. Also, bring a "finished" draft of your Major Project #2. We'll discuss the Final Exam and do Instructor Evaluations. Busy day!

Major Project #2 Due for Peer/Instructor Review

Students will begin class by doing Instructor Evaluations. Please do not be late to class.
Activity: Peer Reivew Major Project #2
Discussion: Final Exam

Last Day of Class

Final Exam 2:00 - 4:30

Final Portfolios Due for Review @ 2:00 p.m.