Banned Books and Censorship Resources

http://georgesuttle.com/censorship/censors-all.shtml

This website has a myriad of links to other websites under the categories book censorship, other media censorship, and free expression and the law.
*warning* some of the many, many links no longer work.

The American Library Association page on banned books is included:
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/challengedbanned.cfm


http://www.booksatoz.com/censorship/banned.htm

Webquest Finds-Cisneros and Santiago

I found this webquest initially, and I actually found it useful in a few ways. First, I think it is always interesting to have a discussion about culture. Students can discuss where they come from and how they feel a part of the community in which they live, or how they feel marginalized. I hated teaching the Outsiders, but I found that students identified with questions about "fitting in." Similarly, they were able to relate with characters that struggled to assimilate into a new culture. This particular webquest on House on Mango offers similar opportunities for students to explore their cultures and feelings regarding cultural difference. The second thing I liked about this webquest was that allowed students to explore, in writing, what it would be like to go to a study abroad program. I think that pushing students to think about countries they would like to visit and study not only gets them thinking about higher education, but it allows them to practice their persuasive writing skills in an entrance essay.
http://coe.west.asu.edu/students/blarson/wquest/index.htm

Another website that might be useful for a middle school classroom:
http://webquest.org/questgarden/lessons/09571-051129200337/task.htm
Again, this website offers ways that students can explore acculutration by examining Esperanza's interactions with other characters that are in her new community. The writing assignment here is a creative idea--writing a vignette--but I think the teacher would need more structure and analysis of Cisnero's writing style before allowing students to venture off an write their own.

This isn't a webquest, but it is a compilation of ways to teach literature by an old professor of mine from grad school at Sonoma.
http://jhh.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/5/2/107.pdf
Related books on assimilating to cultures that I liked: When I was a Puerto Rican by Santiago
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b2587b85ece156ce8c5d

webquest 1

Website: http://www2.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/tips/t2prod/wilkinswq.html

This web quest asks students to explore gender roles and issues of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Students work in groups of four to analyze Roe vs. Wade or Virginia Military Institute vs. United States. First, students gather information about their case, researching precedents to support their argument. Then, students use relevant quotes from the novel as “evidence.” The final assignment requires students to create a newsletter that includes their legal brief as well as two political cartoons connected to the case. The newsletter aspect of this product seems to take away from the legal brief aspect because it asks students to fuse two already foreign and potentially confusing forms of writing. I would modify the assignment so that it focuses solely on argumentative writing. I would also insist that students use at least two other quality sources to support their argument. This assignment would be a good fit for my honors 9th grade English students, most of whom will take AP Language in their junior year. The AP test requires students to synthesize information from several documents to create a convincing argument around a particular issue. This web quest will pose a greater challenge for honors students and will provide them with an opportunity to hone skills necessary for the AP Language course.

Here are additional websites I found helpful:
www.learner.org/resources/series111.html#
home.mindspring.com/~chadwick15/_wsn/Conversation.html
http://www3.uakron.edu/noden/strats/strats9/answers.html
www.webenglishteacher.com/
www.hononegah.org/hono2/reynolds/sentpattrns.html

Webquest on TRagic Heroes

This Webquest for 11th and 12th graders asks small groups to develop web material on tragic heroes. Students are to identify five tragic heroes from literature and from life, give them context, explain what makes them tragic heroes, and provide graphic representations for each. The exercise begins by asking students to review material from previous lessons; this includes terms like “hamartia” and “catharsis” and concepts like Aristotle’s understanding of tragedy. Students then choose five figures from a list of tragic heroes (Hamlet, Antigone, Bill Clinton, Willie Loman) and do basic web-based research on them. After completing the exercises, student groups set up their findings on computers for a gallery walk. Though this does not focus on a particular book, I like this Webquest for its emphasis on literary terms and concepts that could be relevant to an array of texts. I could see many of the characters we have been discussing on blackboard on the list teachers provide the students, and I can imagine lively and productive conversations about contemporary tragic heroes in popular culture and young adult literature. What I appreciate most in this Webquest is a linked “Guide to Building Consensus” that student groups read before beginning. The guide instructs students how to trust one another, how to disagree respectfully, how to negotiate different ideas, etc. The Webquest is at http://www.teachtheteachers.org/projects/JZarro2/index.htm.

Freak The Mighty Webquest

I have not read this book yet, but my 8th grade students all said they read it in 6th grade and loved it. It is a story about the friendship of two boys, one with a physical disability and one with a learning disability. This Webquest directs the students to do further research into disabilities and how they affect people in society. I think the activity could help students empathize more with people with disabilities, and I consider empathy to be an important concept for students to begin to grasp in middle school. For the activity, students work in groups of about five. Each student researches a different disability, and the group later combines its research and designs a public service announcement (PSA) around the information they have compiled. Although each student does have to submit a written report, the activity differentiates somewhat in terms of product by also incorporating a performance aspect in the PSA. Also, prior to conducting their research, students read the book in literature circles in which they are each assigned different roles. Assigning the multiple roles ensures process differentiation along the way.

5 (6) useful websites

Five cool sites for teachers
http://wneo.org/hotlists/Languageartsweb/LanguageArtsWebsites.htm
http://www.brainpop.com/english/
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/
But of course, we are all probably familiar with this one;-)
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson268.shtml
http://www.teenspoint.org/reading_matters/book_list.asp?sort=5&list=274&curpage=9
http://www.nypl.org/
Okay, just this last one that I find incredibly helpful

Night and how to get students to make a meaningful connection

I taught Night by Elie Wiesel last school year and I may teach it again this coming school year. I found Night to be an excellent novel to get students to begin to develop an internal dialogue about social justice and each person’s responsibility. One webquest search I found to be incredibly useful in giving the students an idea of how to connect to the images of the horrific events of the holocaust is http://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/web/2000/baczkowski/intro.htm. There the students created powerful poetry designed to ensure that their friends do not forget the horrors of the holocaust. Each student’s poem has hyperlinked visual images which fills the senses of the reader. The students ultimate goal was to explain why the book by Elie Wiesel is tilted Night.
Although my students struggled somewhat with Night (that is, they failed to make immediate connections), once we began to make real life connections and once we began to talk about social justice they began to understand the seriousness of the situation. I like the lesson in the webquest mentioned above since it has students create their own interpretive visual creative response.