PYTASH - Literature, Knowledge, and the High School Graduate

    "Teaching is an organic process. This is one of the things that make it such a challenging profession" -pg. 155

    In this final chapter of Carol Jago's insightful text, she discusses many different ideas on how to deepen the students' understanding of Julius Caesar. She tells us that spending all of your time planning quizzes, tests and other forms of assessment can be pointless. Teachers need to focus on the critical thinking skills of students, or else they are not going to progress anywhere academically. She also mentions that there are plenty of pre-made tests and quizzes online that are free and available for use. She seems to encourage the use of these materials, and have your students focus more on their thoughts and understanding. I agree with this mostly, but at the same time there are certain things I would want to address that will not be on an already made assessment plan on the internet.
     One of the things that I really enjoyed about this chapter was the assignment that she had about making one of the characters in Julius Caesar a presidential candidate. I think that this will require plenty of thought and planning on the students' part. You could even have the students split into three groups, depending on the class size, and team up with other people who share their same belief about who would make the best president. The students would have to defend their reasoning, and you could even act out a debate with three students in a Fish Bowl activity. Each of the three students would play either Caesar, Brutus or Cassius, and have a debate about becoming president. The students would debate and then return to their groups for coaching on what else they could say. I think this activity would be fun as well as important because the students would have to know their character inside and out in order to portray them and/or coach others on what they think the character would do.