This two-day lesson focuses on the reading and analysis of “The Circuit” by Francisco Jiménez. The goal of this lesson is for students to make inferences about the challenges and changes required of the story’s character, Panchito, and to find evidence of the author’s craft that develops the narrative.Students will reflect upon the relevance of the essential question (In what ways does our need to feel a sense of belonging conflict with our individuality?) to the narrator's experience. In particular, students should recognize that the reality of the narrator's individual situation acts as an impediment to his efforts to belong to a community.Although "The Circuit" is classified as a work of fiction, the author states that the stories represent the lives of his family members. Students will appreciate Jimenez's descriptive, character-driven writing.

This course looks at comedy in drama, novels, and films from Classical Greece to the twentieth century. Focusing on examples from Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Cervantes, MoliĚŹre, Wilde, Chaplin, and Billy Wilder, along with theoretical contexts, the class examines comedy as a transgressive mode with revolutionary social and political implications. This is a Communications Intensive (CI) class with emphasis on discussion, and frequent, short essays.

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore a variety of visual and written tools for self exploration and self expression. Through discussion, written assignments, and directed exercises, students practice utilizing a variety of media to explore and express who they are.

Week 36, Day 1---Day 5
Culminating Activity: Reading and Writing Identity
Memoir: Special memories about a person, place, object or time
"The memoir you will be writing will be a reflection of how you have changed as a reader and writer this year. It’s going to be like a year in review, so you will create a mini book as part of the memoir project.
Some of you may be thinking that this is the same as a personal narrative, but memoirs are more about looking back and thinking about how things have changed over time just like we did at the beginning of class. Narratives tell a story, but memoirs show how the event was meaningful to the author’s life. Also, memoirs are only snapshots. They don’t include the person’s whole life. Now I will add the characteristics of memoirs to the chart.
Use 1st person
Use true descriptions of actual events
Describe any problems faced by the author
Include the author’s feelings about the situation or event
*Narrative Graphic Organizer

Exploring Movie Construction and Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme. This approach to film instruction and analysis has proved beneficial to increasing students’ learning, while enhancing the creativity and critical thinking of the student.

This course concentrates on close analysis and criticism of a wide range of films, including works from the early silent period, documentary and avant-garde films, European art cinema, and contemporary Hollywood fare. Through comparative reading of films from different eras and countries, students develop the skills to turn their in-depth analyses into interpretations and explore theoretical issues related to spectatorship. Syllabus varies from term to term, but usually includes such directors as Coppola, Eisentein, Fellini, Godard, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Tarantino, Welles, Wiseman, and Zhang.

Major narrative texts from diverse Western cultures, beginning with Homer and concluding with at least one film. Emphasis on literary and cultural issues: on the artistic significance of the chosen texts and on their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Syllabus varies, but always includes a sampling of popular culture (folk tales, ballads) as well as some landmark narratives such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and a classic film. This class will investigate the ways in which the formal aspects of Western storytelling in various media have shaped both fantasies and perceptions, making certain understandings of experience possible through the selection, arrangement, and processing of narrative material. Surveying the field chronologically across the major narrative genres and sub-genres from Homeric epic through the novel and across media to include live performance, film, and video games, we will be examining the ways in which new ideologies and psychological insights become available through the development of various narrative techniques and new technologies. Emphasis will be placed on the generic conventions of story-telling as well as on literary and cultural issues, the role of media and modes of transmission, the artistic significance of the chosen texts and their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Authors will include: Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Christian evangelists, Marie de France, Cervantes, La Clos, Poe, Lang, Cocteau, Disney-Pixar, and Maxis-Electronic Arts, with theoretical readings in Propp, Bakhtin, Girard, Freud, and Marx.

This course provides practical instruction in the design and analysis of non-digital games. Students cover the texts, tools, references and historical context to analyze and compare game designs across a variety of genres, including sports, game shows, games of chance, card games, schoolyard games, board games, and role–playing games. In teams, students design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games to understand the interaction and evolution of game rules. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

" An historical examination and analysis of the evolution and development of games and game mechanics. Topics include a large breadth of genres and types of games, including sports, game shows, games of chance, schoolyard games, board games, roleplaying games, and digital games. Students submit essays documenting research and analysis of a variety of traditional and eclectic games. Project teams required to design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games."

Video introduction to simple comics reading, how comics are representational, and the vocabulary of comics. Also includes a brief list of the possible jobs in creating a comic such as writer, artist, penciler, and inker.

Introduction to video editing and interface devices. Explores video as an environmental, editorial and narrative form. Looks at issues of interpretation, meaning, expression and how they relate to historical, social, and cultural issues.

This blog post outlines a unique approach to narrative writing that can be used with writers of all ages. The author outlines the approach and provides examples from her work with middle school students. The post links to a detailed lesson plan for idea generation, as well as narrative accounts of several other mini-lessons that could be incorporated into the unit, depending on the needs of the students.

This blog post outlines a unique approach to narrative writing that can be used with writers of all ages. The author outlines the approach and provides examples from her work with middle school students. The post links to a detailed lesson plan for idea generation, as well as narrative accounts of several other mini-lessons that could be incorporated into the unit, depending on the needs of the students.

In this course students create digital visual images and analyze designs from historical and theoretical perspectives with an emphasis on art and design, examining visual experience in broad terms, and from the perspectives of both creators and viewers. The course addresses key topics such as: image making as a cognitive and perceptual practice, the production of visual significance and meaning, and the role of technology in creating and understanding digitally produced images. Students will be given design problems growing out of their reading and present solutions using technologies such as the Adobe Creative Suite and/or similar applications.

How people make sense of their worlds symbolically through myth, ritual, metaphor, and cosmology. The structure of symbols, the natural and social elements they draw on, their social use, and the messages they convey. Students learn to record and analyze myth and ritual.

Gives students the necessary language skills to successfully employ Spanish in a variety of social situations. Focuses on oral communication and uses popular media for listening practice. Student projects involve reading, oral presentations, and classroom interaction. Emphasizes communication skills needed by students in engineering and management for work in Latin America or Spain. Taught in Spanish. A second-year intermediate course that includes vocabulary enhancement and limited review of selected points of grammar. Focuses on listening comprehension and speaking, with group activities, discussions and individual oral reports based on readings, films, music and art.

Classroom environments can have diversity culturally and socially. Within the environment each student has a unique family and family history. Students will investigate, learn, and share information about their own families and heritages including family traditions, cultural traditions, languages, and generational family history (past two generations).

After this unit, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate chronological thinking by distinguishing among past, present, and future using family or school events.
- Investigate a family history for at least two generations, identifying various members and their connections in order to tell a narrative about family life.

The teacher will engage in a read-aloud with the picture book "Me and My Family Tree" by Joan Sweeney or a similar text. As the teacher reads through the story, they will share information about their own family and allow students to share short stories about their families. This project will be done in the Fall while the students are just starting to get to know each other.

Students will interview their families to complete a family questionnaire, a family tree template, and an interactive family timeline. The final product will be a family tree digital book.

The tools that could be used are Google Slides, Padlet, Book Creator, or a Google Docs page with the student work imported. They can also use Powtoons or Adobe Spark to include sound with storytelling.

After students have read Out of the Dust, they will create a Glogster. They will write about the theme, use their vocabulary words in writing, write using similes, metaphors, and personification in poetry, compare and contrast Billie Jo's experience to someone else in history, and be able to pick an option from a list. They will use their creativity to make their poster appealing to the reader.

Works of film examined in relation to thematic issues of philosophical importance that also occur in other arts, particularly literature and opera. Emphasis on film's ability to represent and express feeling as well as cognition.

Examines the relationship between popular and high culture and the problem of evaluating texts that tell stories. Treats a range of narrative and dramatic works as well as films. May be repeated for credit, with permission of instructor. Topic for Fall: Masterminds. Topic for Spring: Popular Culture in the Age of Media Convergence. Our purpose is to consider some of the most elaborate and thoughtful efforts to define and delineate "all-mastering," and to consider some of the delineations of "all-mastering the intellect" in various guises - from magicians to master spies to detectives to scientists (mad and otherwise). The major written work of the term will be an ongoing reading journal, which you will circulate to your classmates using an e-mail mailing list. The use of that list is fundamental - it is my intention to generate a sort of ongoing cyberconversation.