Hello Fellow Future Educators~
My name is Lauren Howell. I am finishing up my Bachelors degree at Grand Valley State University and plan to move to Daytona Beach and attend Daytona State University for a certification program in August. I also plan on starting my teaching career as a substitute teacher while I am getting certified and then entering the exciting world of teaching English or history in a secondary classroom.
Here you will find my creation of a unit plan based on a theme of stereotypes in literature. I have faced a lot of stereotypes in my life. Starting at a young age, I was always known as the cop’s daughter (which I am proud of), tomboy, teacher’s pet, Korean dater (long story) etc. We all have experienced stereotypes in our lives whether we are aware or not. While I studied abroad, I encountered some very strong racial stereotypes that sparked my interest and ever since I have been sensitive to them in literature. Although stereotypes are not always wrong, I feel a unit plan designed for students to identify stereotypes and critically analyze them is a good start to a freshman year.
This unit plan focuses on rather large stereotypes in race, but along with analyzing racial stereotypes in texts, I want students to accompany these studies with a reader response journal where they will write about any stereotype, small or large, that they encounter. The culminating activity at the end of this unit is a multimedia project where groups of students will present what influenced them in the texts we analyzed.
I hope you enjoy this and if you like any of the ideas feel free to use them. I am excited to perhaps try this very unit plan out someday and develop and tweak it to be more powerful and beneficial for my students.
Thank you for reading.
Lauren Howell
Curriculum Design 