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Kaylee Schwarz

         In English three we have recently been working with pieces of literature from the

American Romanticism Literary time period. Students had the opportunity to read a couple of spooky tales, with the first one being “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. Students were taken back to colonial times to learn about the origin of the Headless Horseman through the life happenings of Ichabod Crane. Students were asked to work with plot and context clues to derive meaning from this complex text. As a concluding project, students created Body Biography projects over a character from the short story. Each of the Body Biography posters had key character features that asked them to “read between the lines” of the text to really get to know their character.

 

         Upon completion of the Body Biography project, students were then asked to be reflexive and examine how well their group members worked with one another during this project. Questions like, “How did group members push each other to reach their potential?” and “How did group members react to the result of criticism and feedback?” asked students to think deeper about the experience. Students then moved into reading “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe. Students worked with applying their inference skills, as well as their close-reading skills, to pull out features that were specific to Gothic Romanticism. Our work with the American Romanticism Literary time period will continue until the close of Semester 1.