Laura Agosto

Secondary English Methods

Meg Goldner Rabinowitz
09/15/15
Teaching The First Day through Transacting, Composing, and Learning to Learn
In order to teach The First Day to my 9th-11th grade students, my two day lesson would
engage with the interrelationships of the language process. This process, as described by Lytle
and Botel, highlights that to learn to read, one needs to learn to write.To write, one needs
wide experiences with reading.Oral and written language should be continuously related
(1990, p. 6). In particular, I would draw upon three of the five critical experiences: transacting
with the text, composting texts, and learning to learn.
One way of inviting students to transact with the text is by bringing prior knowledge and
experience to construct/compose meaning (Lytle and Botel, p. 6). Our first day with this text
would be spent developing background knowledge and bringing our own experience to the story.
Before reading the story it is important to know that it is part of a collection of short stories by
Jones titled Lost in the City. Set in Washington, DC, Joness hometown, this collection focuses
on presenting the daily heroism of this citys working-class black men and women. To follow
this information, there would be a brief think-pair-share about what my students know of
Washington, DC, and how they think their view of the city may differ from Joness. Also, I
would tell my students that the narrator is a woman looking back upon her first day of school.
Through this information I would introduce the concept of perspective. In order for my students
to interact with perspective, I would ask them to briefly write about what they remember from
their first day of school. Questions to prompt them would include: What do you remember about
that day? How did you feel? What did your school look like? Each persons perspective of the
first day of school is different, but it is a moment that most likely everyone remembers. As a
result, students will be bringing their own experiences and perspective to the text, and will be
able to make meaning of the narrators experience.
During chunked reading, students will be annotating. This allows students to develop
their repertoire of strategies for different tasks such as note-making, studying, and generating
questions (p. 8). I will model for students how to annotate effectively. The phrase long before I
learned to be ashamed of my mother indicates that the daughters perspective of her mother has
shifted since her childhood (Jones, 1992, p. 1). Having underlined and analyzed the phrase I
would model for my students a question that I would generate for this annotation: How and why
did our narrator learn to be ashamed of her mother? Day one would conclude with students
answering at least two questions that they created during annotations and a whole class share out.
Day two of teaching the The First Day would begin with a Do Now that asks students
to answer the question: Who determines your educational experience? Next, I would open up the
class for a discussion about their annotations from the previous day. In doing so the class would
be learning to function independently and interdependently by gaining knowledge from one
another (Lytle, p. 8). If not already mentioned, I would direct students to think about the lines
You gonna go there and learn about the whole world. But one of the guardians of that place is
saying no, and no again (Jones, p. 2). I would prompt their thinking with questions such as:
How is our narrators perspective of education being molded here? What difference is there

between what the mother wanted for her daughter and what reality presents? These two
sentences are a sad portrayal of education. The narrator is learning that there are guardians of
education who dictate where one can and cannot go to learn. After discussing this quotation, I
would ask my students to compare this experience to their own, and to once again consider if
their educational experience has been molded by someone else.
After we have finished discussing, I will ask my students to think about how the narrator
is able to make sense of her first day of school and her perspective of her mother though this
memory. Our discussion, like those that preceded it, will require students to use textual evidence
so that students are engaged in the social nature of language as they will be a community of
readers, writers, and talkers (Lytle, p. 5). The class will then write their own stories in order to
make sense of their perspective of education, and or their parents thus far. They will be
encouraged to use a specific memory to frame their writing as our narrator has done.
Through these two days, my students will interact with The First Day as readers,
writers, and communicators. By engaging with every part of the language processes- reading,
writing, listening, and speaking- my students skills in each of these categories will be enhanced
(p. 6). By connecting and constructing meaning within The First Day, each of my students will
be able to learn about the development of perspective and how their own perspectives towards
key life experiences such as education and parental relationships have shifted with age.

Works Cited

Jones, E. (1992). The First Day. In Lost in the City: Stories. New York: Morrow.
Lytle, S., & Botel, M. (1990). Chapter 1: The Critical Lenses. In The Pennsylvania Framework
for Reading, Writing, and Talking Across the Curriculum: PCRP II (pp. 1-10). Harrisburg,
PA (333 Market St., Harrisburg 17126-0333): The Dept.