S+Buys,+John

**Office: Room 103** **Office Hours: M,W,F 5-7 am** ** E-mail: john.buys@maine.edu **
 * Teacher: Mr. J. W. Buys**

**Regionalism: Literature of Cultural Experience**

=Summary of Unit= Realism as a literary movement brought an authenticity and rawness to literature that had not been precedented in American culture. This authenticity and rawness evolved Naturalist sentiment and Regionalism as a genre as well. Regionalist literature faces the challenging of reflecting both universal themes as well as themes characteristic to specific area. Through a variety of texts from different geographical and cultural regions in the United States, students will develop understanding of literature's characters, themes, and devices as a result of authors' own cultural experiences. This transcendence is applicable to the impact of differing artistic mediums as well. In an evolving and emerging era of globalization and cultural integration, comprehension of culture's influences on society and individuals is pertinent to participating in global citizenry. =Establish Goals= Common Core State Standards Content Area: Reading Grade Level: Grades 9-10 Domain: Literature Standard: Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Clusters: 3,6,7 =Students will understand that= •complex characters interact with other characters and develop as the plot advances developing motivation, complexity, and theme. •authors' different and divergent cultural experiences are reflected within their literary works. •differing artistic mediums reveal unique aspects of culture and characters' complexity. =Essential Questions= •How do different cultures' characters and their motivations and interactions develop complexity, plot, and theme? •Why do audiences benefit from diverse cultural experiences within literature? •How do different mediums reflect cultural and character complexity? =Students will know= •literature: terminology and critical details such as theme, characters, plot, literary devices (archetypes, metaphors, allusion) •cultures: classification, classification, presentation, and key factual information. •medium: terminology (short story, novel, poem, drama, and visual) and, important events and people (authors of short stories), sequences (Regionalism, Gothic, Naturalism, Realism), and critical details. =Students will be able to= •demonstrate culture's influence in developing character, complexity, plot, and theme. •evaluate universal and regional characters, themes, and plot devices. •propose how different mediums reflect culture. •contrast universal and regional characters and themes as a result of cultural experience. •consider the advantages and disadvantages of cultural experience's influence in literature •recognize the benefits of portraying different cultural experiences in different mediums. **Performance Task Overview** Travelocity has a “novel” idea for marketing regional destination packages within the United States. They want to incorporate the literary masterpieces of places to characterize the cultural experience. You have been selected for your understanding of marketing and traveling as a top travel agent to create the pitch for selling a location in the US. Their only stipulation requires that it needs to be multimedia and digital in order to advertise it on their website. The corporate level is expecting dialect, setting, themes, characters, etc. to reflect the destination from the perspective of one of the literary works via video, photos, audio recordings, etc. The digital presentation should also encourage potential vacationers to read the book for tips on handling the locals. No gnomes necessary. =Expectations=

Academic Civility
Creating a classroom environment that encourages everyone to greater academic understanding requires utmost attention to respect for the classroom, teacher, and fellow students. Student will be expected to always come to class prepared with necessary reading, homework, and tools. Diligence to punctuality is another way that students can show respect toward the class. Using class time wisely will encourage optimal learning success. When class time is used for things not related to school work, such as cellphone usage, web surfing, emailing, etc. will be disciplined. Classrooms need to encourage everyone's learning and developmental growth. Respect for each other's perspectives, work habits, and learning styles is necessary. Attentiveness while others are asking questions or discussing is required. Every question is a good question.

Academic Integrity
Plagiarism is a crime. Academic environments need to take the rights of intellectual property seriously to encourage and promote academic creativity. Incorrect citations, copied work credited as a student's own, etc. will result in an automatic 0. MLA-style documentation is the encourage formatting for citations in this classroom. If a student has any questions regarding citations and what is and in not appropriate for citing work, they are encourage to come and ask me whatever questions they have.

Attendance
Regular attendance is vital for students who expect to get the full measure of what they can learn. If students miss class it is their responsibility to come to the teacher or a peer outside of class time to find out what activities, lessons, and assignments they missed. Participation in class events is mandatory.

Late Work
Students who are given the equivalent amount of time for missed work as they days absent. For example, if a student misses three days of class they have three days to make up the late work. Students are always encouraged to negotiate deadlines with the teacher on for acceptable and appropriate reasons. Student who do not meet late work deadlines receive a lowered letter grade for each day passed.

=Benchmarks (500)=

• Wiki:(50)
This page will generate discussion and responses about characters, plot, and themes to gauge understanding. Students will keep a comprehensive wiki page for all the short stories read in class. Students will be responsible for updating them for each of the short stories. Students are also required to comment at least twice for each new story on someone else's wiki in order to generate conversation.

• Google Docx:(75)
This interactive paper will compare and contrast regional versus universal relevance of culture in literature. Students will discuss a theme, character, etc. from one of the short stories as either regional or universal. Students will make two drafts. One teacher edited and one peer edited. Students may meet with the teacher to edit the paper via googledocx as much as they desire. The paper must be in Times New Roman, double spaced, and 12 point font. 1000-1500 words is preferable.

• Glogster:(50)
Using a variety of mediums, students will present a theme in three different mediums and explicate how it is translated differently for each. Glogster provides the opportunity to incorporate multimedia dimensions and information. The more variety of presentation the better. This is also an opportunity to test run Glogster before the final performance task.

• Imovie: (75)
Students will either be an author or character from a work and will interview each other to establish what cultural influences exist. Students are encouraged to get into character and discuss the themes and conversations reflected in discussion. Additional research is strongly encouraged.

• Blog:(50)
This will be a forum for students to reflect on the literature as well as their own cultural experiences and reactions to them. Blogs are a chance to internalize information and respond to it. Students will blog about a variety of literary works and mediums in order to analyze the works as well as their own cultural influences. Commenting and discussing on blogs will also be required. 2 at least. Other topics of relation may be posted on the vblog

• MTN2: (75)
Online Newspaper: Students will be asked to analyze the benefits and disadvantages from a journalist's perspective. Articles will be no more than three 1000 words. Articles require students to synthesize the information that is most important in a logical and effective manner. The articles will discuss a variety of fine art pieces, literary works, and modern culture. Students are also encourage to do additional pieces such as comics, reviews, editorials, classifieds etc. for the collective project

• Performance Task Glogster: (100)
See Performance Task Above.

=Grading Scale=
 * A ** (93 -100), ** A- ** (90 - 92), ** B+ ** (87 - 89), ** B ** (83 - 86), ** B- ** (80 - 82), ** C+ ** (77 - 79), ** C ** (73-76), ** C- ** (70 - 72), ** D+ ** (67 - 69), ** D ** (63 - 66), ** D- ** (60 - 62), ** F ** (0 - 59).