Pytash- Wiki Reflection

            When I first drew The Help as my assigned text at the beginning of the semester, I was a little disappointed. Most of my classmates had classic texts whereas I had a text that was published in 2009. In the beginning of my search for lesson plans and activities I was under the impression that the links had to relate exclusively to The Help. With hours of searching and only three links to show for it, I was a little discouraged.

            I brainstormed some ideas for my wiki with Dr.Pytash, and I ended up finding a lot of great resources. I was surprised at the number of educational tools and resources I discovered through this project, and at the amount of lessons and activities that were multi-modal.  Despite the fact that the lessons and activities I found were relatively different from more traditional methods, they all met at least one of the standards and were theoretically sound.

            All of my links were based on the educational standards from grades 7-12, so I looked for a variety of different ideas. While I feel that some of my lessons and activities favor middle school students and others, high school students, they all meet the developmental needs of students within that age group.

            The Help takes place in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement when there was a lot of racial tension. I was careful to choose links that were sensitive to the needs of diverse students that may be in my class one day.

            This book has a lot of historical references in it, so I found a few links that dealt with this time period. A lot of the resources said that the lessons could be used for English or Social Studies, so I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to collaborate with Social Studies teachers when teaching this text.

            I learned a lot about the historical context of this book through completing this assignment. I also learned that when teaching a newer text I have to be creative in my findings. I couldn’t rely on finding activities and lessons which were solely based on the book but I had to think about literary elements in the text as well as the historical context.

            Overall, I think my hard work paid off, and I am excited to use the resources that I found in the classroom.