11th+grade+lesson+ideas

Calling all American lit. buffs! We need lesson plan ideas! Also, how are you managing the writing? Important Dates: Junior Expo- May 28th! After school in cafeteria. All Juniors in Eng. III this semester must have their portfolio and visual product to display. Great college essay assignment: Students read excerpts from "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch about achieving childhood dreams. Then they had generate a list of their childhood dreams. From that list they picked one to write about it. In a 500-750 word essay students had to explain the dream, whether or not it came true yet...or whether or not they were still persuing the dream and why. I got precious results from this...some of them dreamed of being superheros or dinosaurs and such...and the loss of innocence when realizing that dream was impossible to fulfull was wonderfully depicted...or when they turned that dream into something realistic to achieve that was great, too. I had others who have known from a young age their career desires and they wrote about all the steps they are taking to achieve that. This was some of the strongest writing I've seen from my students this year. -B