Literature into Film, and a Poem

January 18, 2019

Assuming you might have a bit a breathing and reflection time as the New Year begins,  you might find this article, which you can access online through the 6 free articles offered by JSTOR, relevant to what you are doing in your classroom.  We all, I think, use film...

Digital Theatre

November 12, 2018

Following up on last month’s post about the suggested option, ‘Literature and Film,’ which focuses on adaptations from text to film, here’s another suggestion for those teaching plays in far-flung places where live theatre is not a matter of...

Literature and Film

October 24, 2018

Currently, ‘Literature and Film’ is one of the most popular ‘suggested options’ under Part 4: Options (a bit confusing, to say the least, though it all shakes out as ‘Free Choice’, really). There are a lot of great ideas coming from...

The Writer, or the Speaker, the Voice, the Persona?

September 3, 2018

Over the years, all of us have struggled with the vexed question of ‘who is speaking’ in a poem or in a first person narrative, or in an autobiographical essay.  And of course it troubles our students as they read literature, often especially with poetry. ...

If You’re Teaching Writing about Africa. . .

August 3, 2018

. . .you might find this wry commentary by Binyavanga Wainaina interesting.  This piece was published in 2009 and maybe we–writers and readers–are well beyond this kind of thinking.  And maybe not. I have found the essay useful in class to remind all of us how easy it...

Good Ideas for Interactive Orals (Part 2)

June 13, 2018

Here’s another approach shared by Wendy Boisonnault and Arlene Lee from Sir Winston Churchill in Calgary. If you haven’t encountered Andree Chedid’s From Sleep Unbound, you might want to consider it for your syllabus.  Here’s a brief summary...