This school year, I’m immersed in some classics of American literature, like:

• The Scarlet Letter
• Billy Budd

• The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• The Red Badge of Courage
• …just to name a few from this semester.

Once a week I meet with a class of ten students, leading them through discussions about American books, stories, and the occasional poem, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl” or Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband.”

Preparing for classes, finding study guides the students can use as they read, searching for (or creating my own) vocabulary lists, making quizzes and tests, assigning and grading essays or projects—it all takes time.

Lots of time.

Teachers? I have always respected your work, but now I’m in awe of what you are committed to doing every. single. day.

Since I’m not a trained teacher, I’m piecing this whole thing together on my own. And many of my resources don’t come with teacher guides, so I have to do all of the same work I assign the students.

I have to say, though, that all of this reading, study and discussion has revealed to me the power of digging into a text.

It’s no surprise that the Internet offers many helpful resources to enrich my (and the students’) understanding of these classics. I have even begun to appreciate Cliff’s Notes and SparkNotes for how they provide explanations of difficult passages, keep characters straight, or point out symbolism I might have otherwise missed.

Now that I’ve been forced to dig deeper into these texts than I’ve ever dug before, I’m convinced I’d like to continue these methods and utilize these resources for myself, even when I’m not teaching.

The Scarlet Letter was my first book to try to organize existing materials. While there are many outstanding resources, and a trained teacher with years of experience would have much more insight than I, here is what I pulled together:

• Study Guide: For accountability and to check comprehension, I try to find a study guide for each book that the students must fill out as they read. We only meet once a week, so if they can’t figure out what’s important to note in the assigned chapters, they could be lost for days before we clear it up in class discussion. I used this Glencoe study guide that I found online, picking and choosing the activities (they had to complete the questions, but I skipped or modified some of the activities).
• Skit: Based on some feedback I got via e-mail, I got the feeling the students didn’t understand what was happening in “The Custom House” and the first few chapters of the book, so I brought in a construction paper “A,” a fake flower, and a big piece of cardboard. I had the students act out the basics of “The Custom House,” having the Nathaniel Hawthorne/Narrator discover the “A” among the papers. Then we switched to the story itself and someone held the cardboard to be the prison door. Someone else held the flower to be the rose bush. And we talked about the symbolism after they acted it out. I ran around sort of giving instructions and offering a sketchy narration, walking them through the first few events. The book has quite a dramatic opening, but I think its impact and drama can get lost in the difficult vocabulary. For a few minutes, I wanted them to experience the story without sifting through the words.
• Pillory: I found a great photo of a pillory to show them here, so they could envision where Hester was standing for her public humiliation.
• Journal: The students are required to keep a reading journal, one entry per school day (a minimum of five sentences per entry; yes, I’ve had to count). I check these to be sure they are tracking. They are asked to be responding to their reading in some way—I wanted them to have a safe place to talk freely about the books. I could probably do better at creating some vision for the journals. Some of them don’t seem to grasp the potential of recording their responses and struggle to fill an entry.
• Vocabulary: The study guide provided some vocabulary lists. I used those.
• Quizzes: Most of the quizzes were vocabulary quizzes, since there are so many challenging words in The Scarlet Letter. I had my dictionary next to me the entire time I was reading the book. I should probably try to design them SAT-style, but I haven’t yet; the quizzes have been straightforward, matching the definition to the word.
• Study Resources: I referenced the Cliff’s Notes for The Scarlet Letter as well as SparkNotes to see what those guides had to say. One that I like from a Christian perspective comes from Progeny Press. I borrowed it from a friend and used some of the questions, especially those that sent the kids digging into Scripture to formulate some ideas on what the Bible says about sin (here’s a sample from that very study guide).
• Story Chart: If you click on this link (the copyrighted material is for preview only), you can see the story chart I’ve been using (scroll to the last page, p.9). This sample shows what kind of information would go in each oval, and it helps organize information in class and stimulate discussion. I draw a blank story chart on the board and walk them through it, to make sure they see what’s going on in the plot, have some idea of themes, conflict, characters, context, etc.
• Test: I created the test by modifying the quizzes found at this and this link. I deleted some questions, changed some of the answers, and added more multiple choice along with some short answer. Some of the questions included the definition of “plot,” “theme,” and “conflict,” which we talked about in class. They also had to answer two short essay questions: (1) “How do guilt, sin and/or shame change Hester, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth?” and (2) “Which character in The Scarlet Letter felt the most alienation? Why do you feel this way?” They were expected to cite at least one passage from the book to support their point(s) as well as talk about plot points or turning points in their own words. They had access to their books for the short essay questions, but not for the multiple-choice/short answer portion.
• Essay Writing: To help the students learn the basics of character analysis, I referenced this and for comparison/contrast essays, I sent them here, hoping they would click all around on the tabs above, because there was a lot of helpful information there. This simple sample essay was annotated to show what worked well. And I really liked this mind map as a tool to help them organize their thoughts and ideas before writing their essay. I took some time one week to walk them through it, though I don’t know if they still reference it.
• Essay Format: To help them learn MLA format, I’ve sent them to the OWL at Purdue.
• Essay Grading: I’ve been using the 6+1 Traits rubric for grading the writing. I like this summary, because it gives me a quick reference while grading that I can also share with the kids, so they can see what I’m looking for.
• Final Project: For their final project, I pulled ideas from this page of Cliff’s Notes. They could choose from the following:

Final Projects