How do I want the world to see me? 
By:  Eric Wilkinson

Project at a Glance :

As part of the Big Read, students will explore The Great Gatsby, American Born Chinese, and Mexikid. They will explore how the characters in these novels choose an external identity and examine how this affects their self-image. Many of my students will have already read most of these novels as freshmen and sophomores. Our focus will be on helping younger students connect with these themes on identity. We will also be exploring these ideas with the wider adult community. This unit will take 3-4 weeks.

Driving Question:

How does my chosen identity affect me and those around me? How can we help underclassmen connect to this theme through literature?            

Standards:
CCSS.RL.11-12.3 and 5 
CCSS: SL.11-12.2



Team / Culture Building:
I establish writing groups via a personality profile called Principles You. I use this and a brief Google Form to create heterogeneous groups of students who can work well together. We begin class each day with a non-academic question that requires them to reach consensus on an answer they will share with the class.

Before addressing the driving question, students will also complete hopes/fears/norms. They might assign specific roles to each other for the project. 

I wonder if exploring each other’s social media would help build culture too. This would directly connect to the idea of external identities.


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Entry Event:
Gatsby-style party for my students and their authentic audience (E2 Honors). My creative writing students will be given roles to play based on characters in Gatsby. These characters will have a “public persona” and an “underlying identity.” I’m inspired by this  clip from Parks and Rec. The E2 Honors kids will have to meet several “characters” and jot down their first impressions of them. Who are they? Who are they pretending to be? How do they want to be perceived?
We might also read a Self-branding article, one about influencers quitting, and content creators burning out.  Is there a movie about public vs. private identities?

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Stakeholders:
E2 Honors reads The Great Gatsby and E1 reads American Born Chinese, so they are our immediate stakeholders. We want to help them connect to the themes of the books they are reading.

Secondary stakeholders are the wider community via The Big Read.



Empathy Building:
Hopefully, there will be some empathy because my students have already been in their shoes as freshmen and possibly sophomores. We can go down and visit Gramek’s classroom to interview the Honors 1A students and sophomores in Farney’s Honors 2A.
I can take pictures of the classes we visit and post those as the background on my BenQ.



Inquiry / Need to Knows:
 

• Interviews w/ stakeholders
  
• Touchstone tour with various genres
  
• Netflix Template to outline “episodes” of The Great Gatsby.
  

• Save the Last Word with readings and supplementary materials (read articles on “personal brands” and influences whose private identities differ from their public identities
  
• Empathy Map for character in novel
  
• Drawing emotional faces
  
• Exemplars of various genres (poems, screenplays, graphic novels, etc)
  

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Incubation:
 

• Forced Analogies: How am I like a pizza? How am I like a car? How am I like an app on a phone? How am I like _______? Do this for ourselves and for our character in the novel.
  
• Draft poems exploring the identity of a character.
  
• “Where I’m From,” “The Words Under the Words,” epitaph, blackout, golden shovel, and villanelle.
  
• Write a poem for two voices: How does the character want the world to see them? What’s their “true” identity?
  
• Have students create a similar poem for themselves.
  

• 3-2-1 Bridge before and after reading a portion of the novel.
  
• True for Who to explore characters from the novel in conflict and dramatize the scene (screenplay portion)
  
• Options Diamond to explore the similarities and contrasts between our authentic selves and our public selves.
  

​Checking in:
 
During each stage of the project, we will use the FAST Rubric Reflections. These reflections will allow me to check in with students about once per week.

Some protocols I might employ include the following:
“Start, Stop, Continue”
“Save the Last Word”
“Tell It to a Toddler”
“Check In, Check Out”








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Solution Building:
 
We will practice re-telling portions of The Great Gatsby in alternative genres. We’ll write identity-based poems for the characters (Students will preview six types of poems: “Where I’m From,” “The Words Under the Words,” epitaph, blackout, golden shovel, and villanelle), create Netflix landing pages and screenplays based on chapters and events, we’ll explore what a Gatsby-inspired graphic novel might look like.

We will create stakeholder map and an empathy map to determine what freshmen and sophomores need. From there, I like to use bracketology to narrow the solutions down to a final two-four possibilities. We’ll use the NUF Test to determine which of our possible solutions best meets the needs of our audience.

Critique and Revision: 
 
The NUF test from the previous slide will help them to choose the best solution.

I’m curious if Brisk could provide AI-generated feedback on students’ work as a way for them to improve it. I will also have groups give each other feedback using the FAST Rubrics. The Austin’s Butterfly video is great for teaching students how to provide concrete, constructive feedback.

Authentic Audience:
 
Freshmen and sophomores who are reading The Great Gatsby and American Born Chinese.

Either a gallery walk experience or short videos where they “read aloud” their versions of the texts.

My students will get to choose the most engaging form to share the texts with their audience.


Final Presentation:
 

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:
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The freshmen and sophomores will have a scoring guide to evaluate the texts. They will give feedback on fidelity to the source material and how engaging their versions are.

I’ll adapt the validation rubric from the FAST Rubrics.

Students will reflect throughout the process. During investigation, they will reflect on their research but especially on the stakeholders. They will also reflect on their solution and how it accomplishes the task. This will be in the form of an elevator pitch and might include a prototype.

After sharing their product, they will reflect on the feedback they received from their audience and their contributions to the final product.

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:

Eric Wilkinson teaches English at West Ottawa High School. 

     "PBL helps students see a purpose for their work.  It's more meaningful because it impacts them and their community."