Journal 12

I was very pleased with how the class discussion on Uglies went. In our prereading activity we had the class answer questions to create what they thought the perfect person was. They seemed to enjoy this exercise and it lead into a good discussion. We split the class up, boys and girls, and we discussed our answers and what it means to be attractive in today's society. Most people agreed that it is beneficial to be attractive over not attractive. Attractive people get more attention, are more likely to be hired, and receive special treatment from certain people such as a police officer. Most of the guy's in the group had similar answers to the questionnaire about what the perfect guy would look like. The whole class then got together and we shared answers and it was all fairly similar. We then asked the class to switch questionnaires with someone else and to stand up. We called out different categories and if you did not match the other person's answer, then you had to sit down. Eventually everyone had to sit down and it was clear that no one was perfect looking in the class.
For our quiz we decided to have the class create their own questions. This made them think more critically of the book to be able to come up with questions. They then kept their quizzes so that they could bring up any questions that they thought may add to the discussions. I thought this went well and I would consider doing it in my classroom. We then gave the answers to the classes questionnaires they had answered the previous week. It was interesting to see how many people gave the same answers. We then began discussing the novel and I think it went very well. People seemed eager to participate and we had a good combination of students sharing. We discussed the book in detail, the themes in the book, and our own society today. I think that everything led to one another very well and there were little pauses in the discussion. Overall I think our discussion worked and people were engaged with the book and the rest of the class. If I could change anything about it I think I would make them do another activity on the day we discussed the book. The entire class was sitting the whole time and I could see some people beginning to get bored. Maybe some kind of small exercise int he middle where we made them do something would have helped. Overall I am very pleased with how things went and I was able to use everyone else's discussions from the semester to make ours the best we could. This was certainly a learning experience for me.