About this Project
This project is the result of a major assignment of my English methods course at Wake Forest University. This class is designed to help future English teachers learn how to teach English/Language Arts. We were asked to select a Young Adult novel, identify and select a theme, and explore that theme through at least 10 different "genres." The idea was to examine this theme in relevant ways, ways we might also ask our future students to explore.
From Patricia McCormick's novel, Never Fall Down, I chose the theme "Children in War and the War within Children." This theme asks readers to think about how children view war, but more importantly, it demands that readers also consider the emotional and psychological effects conflict has on adolescents. Fortunately, most students in the United States have not experienced war firsthand. However, every student has witnessed conflict and many of them also know more than their fair share about violence.By engaging with war and conflict in novels and other media, students can learn more about their own experiences and how to deal with them. Students may also develop empathy both for children in other countries as well as for adolescents in this country.
This project consists of the following genres:
Other resources are also made available on this site.
My hope is that this project reflects my belief that war and conflict need to be studied beyond mere facts and figures. Conflict is a part of every student's experience in some form, and students can benefit by looking at the complexity of war from different perspectives.
For contact information or just more information on me, feel free to visit my professional website.
From Patricia McCormick's novel, Never Fall Down, I chose the theme "Children in War and the War within Children." This theme asks readers to think about how children view war, but more importantly, it demands that readers also consider the emotional and psychological effects conflict has on adolescents. Fortunately, most students in the United States have not experienced war firsthand. However, every student has witnessed conflict and many of them also know more than their fair share about violence.By engaging with war and conflict in novels and other media, students can learn more about their own experiences and how to deal with them. Students may also develop empathy both for children in other countries as well as for adolescents in this country.
This project consists of the following genres:
- A short paper exploring the theme through connections to canonical texts, nonfiction, poetry, journal articles, and young adult fiction.
- A poem about the war of adolescence
- A fictional text message exchange between two characters in Never Fall Down
- A Prezi presenting facts and statistics from Unicef and Child Soldiers International
- A critical blog post looking at how Western culture really views child soldiers
- A series of minimalist posters designed to inform audiences about child soldiers
- An original high school English lesson plan incorporating this theme
- This website and its included comments
- A Tagxedo wordcloud summarizing and conveying some of the ideas associated with child soldiers
- A lullaby-like poem conveying some of the emotions of being a child soldier
Other resources are also made available on this site.
My hope is that this project reflects my belief that war and conflict need to be studied beyond mere facts and figures. Conflict is a part of every student's experience in some form, and students can benefit by looking at the complexity of war from different perspectives.
For contact information or just more information on me, feel free to visit my professional website.
