a.+Rationale


 * Rational Statement**

The unit “How to Tell a True War Story” is centered around Tim O’Brien’s novel on the Vietnam War, //The Things They Carried.// The unit is designed for eleventh-grade students in an on-level or Honors American literature class during the second semester of the school year. The Florida Department of Education requires that 11th grade students study American Literature. This work was chosen because it not only fits that requirement, but it expands upon the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills described in the Florida Department of Education Standards and the Sunshine State Standards for the students. The specific standards are unique to each lesson plan, however there are overarching standards to consider for this unit. Mainly, students will determine the main idea or essential message of a text through analysis and slow-reading activities ( LA.1112.1.7.3) ; students will analyze and interpret the authors’ perspective and purpose as it contributes to meaning ( LA.1112.1.7.2) ; and students will analyze the way in which themes and sections of the text provide a comment on greater life (LA.1112.2.1.4). other specific standards are listed in the lesson plans in which they are addressed.

The material used in this unit will include O’Brien’s text, multimedia presentations, internet Wiki forums, and related supplementary texts. The themes covered in this unit are not only important to adolescent education, but they are also necessary for the development of literacy practices and the sense of civic literacy necessary in a participatory democracy. The unit addresses the concept of the representation of war and the many nuances of that representation. Students will engage in analysis of literary style and technique as those elements intersect with human experience and social context. The unit will deal with issues of violence and brutality in war, the psychological effects of war, the concept of camaraderie, personal responsibility, media manipulation of experience, and ultimately, the art of story telling. A constructive investigation of these issues gives adolescents the skills and confidence to confront difficult issues in their own lives and to take an active, informed, and collaborative stance on the issues we all face in both local and global communities.

The fundamental organization behind this unit is a combination of thematic and topical organization methods (TLA Ch. 3). The unit deals with the large concept of war, but addresses this concept in the specific topical context of the Vietnam War. The comparative recentness of this war and the writing of the principle text of the unit provide a point of temporal relevancy for the students, even though few are expected to have comprehensive knowledge on the topic. It is possible that students might know a Vietnam veteran, or might at least be aware of issues concerning veterans today. Though discussion of actual topical concerns of the Vietnam War (such as recognition of PTSD and media manipulation of war coverage) are not deeply explored in this unit, some of the lessons acknowledge these cultural issues with the intent of scaffolding students in looking further into the social factors effecting issues today. Needless to say, the present involvement of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan is of indisputable significance in regard to the purposes of this unit. Many students can be expected to at least know someone involved in this war, and once again, though it is not addressed specifically in these lesson plans, the content coverage of the unit aims to prepare students to think critically about war, its context, and its profound effects on the individuals involved.

In conjunction with the topical characteristics, the unit is principally thematic. It covers war, but it also focuses extensively on the act of story telling. The human impulse to recount experience is an enduring theme across all of human history. Because O’Brien uses a style that breaks familiar narrative conventions, his novel provides an excellent access point for investigating narrative style in relation to its purposes and effects. This investigation aims, through carefully structured instruction and student practice, to aid students in developing their own narrative styles through which they can express their own personal experiences. Beyond expressing themselves through writing alone, students will use the skills attained through this unit will to explore a variety of outlets for expression and to analyze those social and personal factors that effect how they construct their experiences. This situational and self-awareness, when combined with critical thinking abilities, will promote confidence, agency, and autonomy in our students. Like any method, the thematic organization of the unit presents certain weaknesses. Most importantly, teachers will not want to impose their opinions on students regarding an issue as controversial and convoluted as war. O’Brien’s novel is clearly anti-war, and so, in efforts to somewhat mitigate this fact, the unit focuses heavily on the elements of the text's construction in relation to the effects the text produces in the reader. However, the point of teaching a war-related text is to acclimate students to discussion of war issues, and so extensive care should be taken in establishing a safe and respectful classroom environment. The teacher should make it explicitly clear that neither the book nor the unit is against the soldiers in any way, as many of our students could know people that are presently or have been in the military. This is an especially sensitive issue because of the current war, and so teachers should be sensitive to the emotional states of students with enlisted loved-ones. Many of the activities in the unit encourage students to make connections between the text and their personal lives, and this process may be difficult for such students. The teacher should be constantly aware of the needs of these students and should remind the class that the novel indeed represents the voice of a soldier, and that, especially in a time of war, it is those voices that need to be heard.

Also, because students may be reluctant at first to discuss the controversial issues encountered throughout the unit, they will be encouraged (and in some part required) to contribute their thoughts on social issues on the class Wiki forum designed for this purpose. The Wiki provides a safe space where shy or hesitant students can make their opinions heard, and it is also something that the teacher can monitor to ensure respectful behavior between students. After being acquainted with difficult issues through the Wiki forum, students will be more prepared to converse about them in the Socratic Seminars.

A more technical shortcoming of the thematic approach to unit organization is the difficulty in choosing unit material from the overwhelmingly broad resources available relating to both war and story telling. In response to this challenge the unit was designed with a focus on //The Things They Carried// as the primary text. This choice was made to avoid overwhelming both the students and the teacher, as a lesser amount of material covered will allow for a more thorough exploration and consideration of that material. For the time allotted, the issues covered in the unit still provide a considerable amount of material for students to remain engaged and challenged over the course of the unit while still encountering a significant number of important social and literary issues.

The unit is organized to follow the linear progression of the novel. Important social and literary concepts are presented in lessons congruent with the chapters that most clearly embody these issues. This approach is the most logical because it does not inhibit the flow of the reading, but rather enhances student understanding through continuous and recursive analysis of recurring elements and themes in the text. For instance, the students will learn about dichotomies early in the unit and will return to this concept several times as O’Brien further deconstructs terms such as “courage” in his narrative. In order to introduce the unit, the teacher will show a montage of images form the Vietnam War and ask students to discuss their reactions to this montage and to offer the class any information that they might already know about the War and its context. This activity helps with the envisionment-building process of stepping into the story world (Langer) and draws on students' prior knowledge for this process. This introduction also links the text with a specific historical moment and social climate, which establishes the reading’s relevancy to real life. The culminating project is designed to return to this idea of relevancy, and involves the construction of student narratives that integrate the methods O’Brien uses to tell his story. In emphasizing the importance and agency of the individual voice, this assignment not only empowers and legitimizes the experiences of the students, but also those of the soldiers in O’Brien’s book.

Students will engage in several literacy practices over the course of this unit. They participate in perspective-taking in the envisionment-building activities in the Introductory Lesson and the lesson on the chapter “The Things They Carried.” In these activities students begin to consider the climate of the war and actually try imagining themselves in the place of the soldiers (as when students are asked to create a representation of things that they would “carry” with them in a similar situation). This perspective-taking is essential to Langer’s reading stance “Being Out and Stepping Into an Envisionment.” Students use their prior knowledge to orient themselves to the historical event of the Vietnam War. The slow reading and characterization activities from the lesson on “The Things They Carried” help studetns get past the high density of specialized vocabulary found in this chapter to begin to organize concepts in relation to specific characters. This practice requires teacher scaffolding through modeling of this organizational process and the use of the Character Charts. Students are then prepared to individually practice organization techniques as they progress through the novel.

Students create and analyze social worlds in the “On the Rainy River” lesson when they explore the meaning of the narrator’s “life audience” and then proceed to represent their own. Through this exploration of social worlds students can see how cultural elements reflect cultural values, and how these values can consciously or subconsciously influence personal action and belief. This lesson also provides for making connections between the lives of the students and the social factors that effect their lives. Students must receive Overt Instruction during this lesson in order to understand the cultural connotations of terms encountered in this lesson’s reading. Creating social worlds is also an elaboration of the story world envisionment process, as the more complex and nuanced a student’s envisionment becomes, the further the horizon of possibility may extend.

The literacy practice of explaining characters begins with the analysis of character charts in the first lesson and continues for the entire unit. The lesson on “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” involves students in assessing character motivation and authenticity, while the lesson on “Speaking of Courage” utilizes a psychological lens and the real condition of PTSD to try to understand why O'Brien tells one character's story the way that he does. Students continue to explain character actions as they follow the narrator through acts of sadistic revenge (“Ghost Soldiers) and of ambiguous emotional resolution (“Field Trip”). Ultimately, students are asked to use the skills learned through these practices to explain their own inner character through their narrative final projects.

Many of the lessons ask students to re-read the text, such as the lesson for “The Man I Killed,” in which students create character sketches that force them to think about the details that create a human being (both literally and in narrative). Re-reading requires students to confront difficult issues that they might have glossed over in first readings, and it also helps them to step further into the story world. Extensive teacher support is provided during these lessons through modeling and individual attention to students during group-work sections of the lessons.

Students are given Overt Instruction followed by opportunities for Situated Practice in the lessons that introduce critical lenses in readings of the text (lesson for “On the Rainy River;” lesson for “Speaking of Courage”). The teacher explicitly provides students with information and strategies that will be used in these lessons. Students critically analyze texts through several close-reading activities, they evaluate texts in communal discussions, in Socratic Seminars, and on the Wiki forum, and students constantly create texts in the many reflections and creative writing assignments found within the unit. Notably, students participate in several literacy events (informal class discussions, Socratic Seminars, and Wiki Forum) where they synthesize their literacy practices to come together in a communal negotiation of meaning of the text. The skills necessary for meaningful participation in these events are developed over the course of the unit.

Students engage in Situated Practice in the group work that is a frequent part of this unit’s lesson plans. Group work is an important aspect of the unit because it provides an opportunity for students to practice communication skills that they will use in literacy events (Socratic Seminars) and it allows the teacher to formatively assess students’ understanding. In this classroom context the teacher can scaffold students in making connections between their existing understandings and their newly gained academic skills and practices on an individual level and as needed by individual students.

Frontloading is a main principle in the construction of the instructional plan of the unit. The fragmented structure of O’Brien’s narrative style is identified as needing attention early on in the unit. The first few lessons address textual difficulties through slow and close reading, modeling of organizational strategies for understanding the text, and explicit explanation of challenging stylistic elements of the text. The narrative style is continually addressed in lessons such as “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and “How To Tell A True War Story.” After these more technical issues are addressed, and after the students have successfully entered into the story world, the confidence that students feel in regard to the structural elements of the novel will allow them to begin to explore more difficult emotional and social themes. These social themes are also complicated, and for this reason students begin to receive more support in managing these concepts through the lessons on “Speaking of Courage” and “The Man I Killed.” As the students reach the last third of the novel, they receive less and less scaffolding so that the students can be carried by Langer’s reading stance of “Being In and Moving Through An Envisionment.” At this point, after all the work that they have done on the text, they are released to the power of a text that will no doubt do important work on them.

One of the most important elements of the instructional plan is its emphasis of student generative thinking. For instance, students compose poems for the lesson on “The Man I Killed.” They write short personal stories for lesson on “The Lives of the Dead.” Students produce drawings for the lesson on “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” and collages for the one on “The Things They Carried.” They compose numerous responses that react to readings and lessons. The Wiki forum provides for generative thinking on critical issues, as well as for peer interaction in responding to those issues. Students learn to generate not only creative and analytical thought, but also learn how to formulate opinions and cultivate respect for the opinions of others.

This unit is effective in the teaching of both reading and writing because of the numerous literacy practices and events that students engage in, and because of the many activities that promote generative thinking. Reading and writing components of lessons often work together, as when a literary or stylistic device is identified in the text and then students are told to model the use of that device in their own writing. In this way students learn what makes effective writing and how to incorporate those strategies in their own compositions. Connections between reading and writing are made continuously through class discussions, Socratic Seminars, and students’ posts on the Wiki forum. Students are asked to closely examine these reading and writing processes at all points of the unit. These practices and skill are ultimately synthesized in the culminating project. The result of this unit is a student understanding of the social, ethical, and civic implications of war in the context of literature and life. Students will understand the art of story telling in a way that enables them to tell the stories of their own experiences. The skills that students gain over the course of the unit will give them the confidence and the competencies to engage in the civic literacy events essential for the actualization of a participatory democracy.