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Introduction

This lesson was developed as part of the Shelby County School District's Summer Technology Integration Training.

This WebQuest is designed to help students learn to understand some of the schools of literary theory and the terminology of those theories, to evaluate literary criticism, and to analyze Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Content Area and Grade Level

This lesson is anchored in secondary level English literature. Because of the difficulty of some literary theory terminology, this WebQuest is probably best suited to eleventh or twelfth grade literature courses.

Curriculum Standards

English Standards Addressed

Students will address a number of the requirements of the Tennessee Educational Standards and Curriculum Frameworks:

• Content Standard for Writing: The student will develop the structural and creative skills necessary to produce written language that can be read and interpreted by various audiences.
• Content Standard for Reading: The student will develop the reading skills necessary for word recognition, comprehension, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and appreciation of the written text.
• Content Standard for Viewing and Representing: The student will use, read, and view media/technology and analyze content and concepts accurately.
• Content Standard for Speaking and Listening: The student will express ideas clearly and effectively in a variety of oral contexts and apply active listening skills in the analysis and evaluation of spoken ideas.

Implementation Overview

This lesson is organized step by step so that students will learn about types of literary theory and related terminology, utilize that theory and terminology to interpret Kate Chopin's The Awakening from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and create a literary theory of their own. It will help students learn to read literary criticism and interpretation more easily and more critically. It should take 8 to 10 class periods. It is worth this amount of time because it will expose students to skills and strategies that they will need the remainder of this year and in college.

Resources Needed

• Each student needs a copy of the novel
• Inspiration Software (or paper for creating visual organizers) on each available computer
• PowerPoint or ClarisWorks software on each available computer
• On-line Computers--Ideally one per student, but minimally one per group
• The WebQuest Awakening to Literary Theory

Entry Level Skills and Knowledge

Students need to be introduced to Inspiration and PowerPoint or ClarisWorks slide show software. They need to understand how to open links on web pages.

Teachers need a working knowledge of the above software and Internet usage, especially web pages and links to those pages.

Evaluation

By the end of the lesson, students should demonstrate a basic grasp of the following literary theories: psychoanalysis, feminism, culturalism/historicism, and structuralism/deconstruction. Basic mastery will be determined by evaluating their finished process, particularly their Awakening commentary, their pros/cons activity for published commentary, and the presentation of their newly created literary theories. A rubric will be used for grading. See process and rubric for additional information.

Possible Variations

This project could be adapted for use without a computer. Teachers would need to help students locate library sources for literary theory definitions (most literary handbooks contain this information) and examples of criticism (see Annotated Bibliography for assistance with commentary on The Awakening). Teachers would also have to decide what type of presentation (poster, report, etc.) would be substituted for the visual pro/con organizer and for the multimedia presentation. This project could also be used for other works of literature. The teacher would need to locate links for criticism about the piece of literature and create hotlists for those links.

Conclusion

By the end of this project, students should have a beginning knowledge of literary theory and its terminology. Reading literature interpretations and criticisms should be easier for them now, too. They will also hopefully realize that they must always weigh a writer's comments carefully before agreeing--or disagreeing--with him or her wholeheartedly. These are all strategies and skills which will help them in many subject areas in high school and in college; and they are strategies and skills which can help them in their jobs and in everyday life so that they will not be duped into believing things just because a so-called expert says so, or just because the ideas are published or advertised.