Instructional Transformation

This short paper gives you a chance to focus on how you would transform the instruction of the literature class you are teaching. The assignment does not assume that your current instruction is "bad," but that it can, like all instruction, be improved, perhaps dramatically. This paper can be a center piece in your final project, and should be, at this point, about five pages.

We have thought about discipline, subjectivity, the "corespondence principle," "hidden curriculum," student resistance, "problem-posing," textual intervention, grouping and individualized instruction, active and service learning, as well as a variety of "best practices" and formal models for instruction in English.

The best instructional strategies are deeply tied to the curriculum, to what the teacher wants the students to learn.

• What principles will guide instruction in your class? Why?
• What instructional approaches and models will you draw on?
• How will your instruction address issues in schooling and society?
• How will your instruction engage students with reading and literature?
• How will your instruction integrate writing into learning?
• How will your instruction hold high expectations, address a diversity of abilities, and scaffold learning?
• How will your instruction foster independence, ownership, activism, citizenship and lifelong learning?
• What are examples of specific instructional activities that will support your curriculum?

Created by: allen.webb@wmich.edu
Revised Date: 1/10