Andrea Pisano, Reliefs for the Campanile in Florence, c. 1336 Speakers: David Drogin and Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Writing an anecdote as scaffolding to narrative writing
Angles is an annual online magazine of exemplary writing by MIT students. All of the works published in Angles since its first edition in 2008 were written by students in the introductory writing courses. These courses, designated as CI-HW (Communications-Intensive Humanities Writing) subjects, bring together students who love to write, students who struggle with writing, students who thrive in seminar-style classes, and students who just want a chance to develop their English skills. These students prosper together and produce some remarkable work. Angles has provided them with a public outlet for that work. It also provides the CI-HW instructors with material that inspires and guides their current students.
In these classes, students learn to read more critically, to address specific audiences for particular purposes, to construct effective arguments and narratives, and to use and cite source material properly. Students in these courses write a great deal; they prewrite, write, revise, and edit their work for content, clarity, tone, and grammar and receive detailed feedback from instructors and classmates. Assigned readings are related to the thematic focus of each course, and are used as demonstrations of writing techniques. The pieces in Angles may be used as teaching tools and practical examples for other students and self-learners to emulate.
You can find Angles Online.
This video explains how and why Fidel Castro supported the MPLA in Angola from 1975 to 2002. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the largest military confrontation in Africa after World War II. The civil war in Angola was one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts of the twentieth century.
Allegories are similar to metaphors: in both the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject. However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem. This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell’s widely read novella, Animal Farm, which is available on Project Gutenberg.
Students will use pictures to determine the emotions that others feel. Afterwards, students will take an animal personality test to determine what type of animal they are most like. Students will then share with others what animal they are most like and why they are most like that animal.
Explore animal rights.
Students listen to fiction and nonfiction read-alouds and explore selected Websites to identify factual information about animals. This lesson focuses on ants, but can be adapted to any animal.
Learn about the physical characteristics of environments and act out the animals that live there!
You are the next contestant on the Take the Stage game show ANIMAL SURVIVAL where you will travel in a hot air balloon to the forest of North America, the savanna of Africa, and then take a submarine ride underwater in the ocean. To play the game, you will act out an animal that would live in each environment, and then write how the physical characteristics of each environment helps your animal survive.
Learning Objective: observe and describe the physical characteristics of environments and how they support populations and communities of plants and animals within an ecosystem.
This book provides an overview of the current debates about the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals. Which, if any, uses of animals are morally wrong, which are morally permissible (i.e., not wrong) and why? What, if any, moral obligations do we, individually and as a society (and a global community), have towards animals and why? How should animals be treated? Why?
We will explore the most influential and most developed answers to these questions – given by philosophers, scientists, and animal advocates and their critics – to try to determine which positions are supported by the best moral reasons.
In this lesson plan, students will learn about the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. In the introductory first lesson, they will see how animals are often used as symbols. In the second lesson, they will hear one of several versions of how the 12 animals were chosen. They will then focus upon a few of the animals in the story and see how they can be used as symbols of certain human characteristics. In the third lesson, they will be introduced to the other animals of the zodiac, and they will be given a chart on which they will assign traits to each animal. Then they will consult a number of websites to find the traits traditionally associated with the animals, which they will add to their list. Then, they will come up with a number of ways to compare and contrast the animals in the list. In the third lesson, they will focus upon the animal associated with the year of their birth, learning about its traits and discussing whether or not these apply to themselves and their peers. Finally, each student will make an acrostic, combining the letters of his or her first name with adjectives that relate to his or her zodiac sign.
Kirsten Lepore is an artist and filmmaker who works with different animation techniques, including stop-motion animation and claymation. With these videos, learn more about the intentions behind her food-focused film, the unusual materials she works with to create her projects, and why she loves the laborious process of stop-motion animation. Lepore also demonstrates the basics of shooting a stop-motion animation film.
A team of middle school students in Baton Rouge research global warming and produce their take on the subject in this witty 30-second animated short
Now we'll pull everything together and explore how we calculate the position of a particle over time (frame by frame).
This is a short animation summary of the book Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti. It is a good resource for students who want a breakdown of Medza's journey and how this trip changed his life.
This is an animated summary of the book The River Between by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. See how Waiyaki was tasked with a mission to change the path his community was on.
This is a short animation summary of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It is a good resource for students told in a fun and enjoyable manner that will help them remember the story.
Anishinaabe, possibly Mississauga Ojibwa, Shoulder bag (missing strap), c. 1800, tanned leather, porcupine quills, dye, glass beads, silk ribbon, metal cones, and deer hair, Possibly made in Ontario, Canada; possibly made in Michigan, United States; possibly made in Wisconsin, United States, 30.5 × 22.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Created by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Learn about actress Anna May Wong—the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, producer and one of the most influential style icons of her time, in this resource from Unladylike2020. Throughout Wong’s career, she encountered racism and stereotyping in the roles she was offered, but in the end she found a way to flourish as an actor on her own terms starring in 60 films. Using video, discussion questions, vocabulary, teaching tips, and an in-class activity, students learn about Wong’s place in Hollywood history and how she was impacted by important events in American history, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and anti-miscegenation laws.
This lesson concentrates on Anne Frank as a writer. After a look at Anne Frank the adolescent, and a consideration of how the experiences of growing up shaped her composition of the Diary, students explore some of the writing techniques Anne invented for herself and practice those techniques with material drawn from their own lives.