Post for June 25th - Two More Activities

Here are a couple more activities that use popular culture in an English classroom. These activities were designed ideally for a high school classroom, but I feel the ideas can be easily adapted for other grade levels, and subjects.

Activity #1 - Using Popular Music and Popular Culture to Explore Perspective

Purpose: The purpose of this activity is for students to look and consider different perspectives on an issue or historical event that is presented in a literary text. For this activity, I have used the novel The Things They Carried.

Preparations: Before implementing this activity, the teacher should gather a variety of news clips, music, articles, radio broadcasts, and film that pertains to the Vietnam War. Ideally, all the resources gathered should provide different opinions and viewpoints on the events of the war. These resources could also be gathered by way of student research depending on the time available for this activity.

Procedures:

• Students will watch, listen to, and analyze these different resources and viewpoints on the war.
  
• After viewing and listening to each resource, students will discuss and analyze what viewpoint the song, broadcast, or film clip presents. (An alternative to this would be students being assigned a specific song, news clip, radio broadcast, or film to watch, analyze, and present to the class)
• With this, the students will learn about the war (the events and situation), gain insight to the tension the war created, and learn about the different viewpoints surrounding the events of the war.
• Ideally, the above is done prior to reading The Things They Carried so students can pull from the knowledge they gained from the media research to better understand the messaged presented in the book.
• After or during the reading the book, students will discuss the perspective the text makes on the war and which media resources it most closely relates to.
• This activity may conclude with students creating a sort of media that takes a perspective on the War in Iraq similar to how the Vietnam Era media. Or students could write a paper that discusses perspective taking in the novel and its relation to the various perspectives on the war from the media.
  

I have put many possible variations into this activity, but I think many more could be made. This activity allows students to think critically about a text and the media at the same time, making it a very useful tool in the classroom.

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Activity #2 - Text Speak

Purpose: Text messaging is a huge part of youth culture. In text messaging, people generally use fragmented speech in order to make the sending and reading of text messages faster, resulting in the development of a different use of language. This text speak often appears in student writing causing much concern on what is appropriate or standard English writing. This activitiy helps students to understand the different types of Englishes spoken in their lives, when each is appropriate, and how to switch between the two. This activity was inspired by the article "Flipping the Switch: Code-Switching from Text Speak to Standard English" (Turner, 2009).

Procedures:

• Ask students different settings and individuals in which they communicate. Write these on the board. Such examples may be: school, work, internet, or home, and parents, teachers, siblings, or friends.
• With this list, as a class select a few situations of communication: text messaging with a friend, at home with a parent, tweeting on Twitter, at a job interview with a potential boss, at school with the school nurse, or in the classroom with the teacher.
• Along with the class, create a sentence that may be used in all of these situations, such as: "Hello. How are you today?"
• As a class, "translate" this sentence to fit each category. For example, while hanging out with a friend a students may say "Hey. What's up?", where as in a text message it may be "Hi. How r u?", or at home "Hi Mom/Dad! How was your day?". Then discuss how language is used differently in each situation.
• Next, discuss what assumptions a person may have if use text messaging language in a job interview, or if you use the type of language you use when talking to your baby brother in class.
  
• In small groups, students will practice this same activity. Choose a sentence that may be used in each situation, and translate it for 5 different social situations.
• Groups will share their senteces, and after a sentence is shared, the teacher will call out a different social situation for the class to translate the sentence into.
  
• Finally, as a class discuss when it is approprate to use these differet types of speak. Should you use texting language on any classwork? Why or why not? Why do we talk differently when interviewing for a job than we do in a classroom? Why do you talk differently around your parents than your friends? Then discuss how these types of speech cross over, and if some types of speech are innaproriate in different situations.
• A final activity could also be students reflecting on their own use and cross over of these different types of languages and what kind of effect that may have on their classwork, the way people understand them, etc.

This activity allows students to recognize that the type of lanugage they use in their culutre (text messaging, slang, etc.) is a valid form of language, but it also asks them to think about what language is apporpirate in certain situations. This brings in a part of the students' culture (text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and allows students to recognize the vailidity in their communcation, but also that there are certian expectations in different situations.

Turner, K. (2009) Flipping the switch: code-switching from text speak to standard English. English Journal. 98(5), 60-65