In the Middle

Reading Nancie Atwell's In the Midde seemed like an extremely daunting task at the beginning of the semester and definitely served as one of those items of schoolwork sitting at the back of my mind bugging me when I was not working on it. This being said, the chapter I enjoyed the most was "Chapter 3: Making the Best of Adolescence." As a teenager, I know I caused my parents a great deal of trouble; now, watching my brother progress through his adolescent years, it is interesting to be on the other side of the spectrum. Adolescence can be an incredibly rough time where the body is changing, the hormones are raging, and the mind is ready to become independent. No longer do these teenagers want to be under their parents rule. I know this was my problem in high school. The quote that stayed with me from this chapter was, "Surviving adolescence is no small matter; neither is surviving adolescents" (Atwell 53). I liked the play on words and realized the quote was, without a doubt, true. Stating this, teachers need to utilize lessons that relate to their students and the rough time they are going through. They need to understand that adolescence can be hard and need to listen to their students' problems. I remember a teacher in high school who allowed us to write an essay about any topic that related to our lives. I wrote about my boyfriend, which may seem incredibly unrelated to English class, but in writing that I worked hard because I was interested in the subject.

Another aspect of In the Middle that I found interesting was the section on mini-lessons. I think that mini-lessons are effective in teaching students important aspects about English. They also break up the 50 minute period into smaller increments, making it easier for students to pay attention the entire time. Because during my two week unit I have to teach ACT Vocabulary along with Beowulf, I plan to utilize a different ten minute vocabulary mini-lesson every other day. In addition to the vocabulary mini-lessons, I plan to add a mini-lesson about the Anglo-Saxons as well. This way the students will be able to pay attention the entire time during class, and get more out of class time. Overall, I feel as though Nancie Atwell presented some excellent teaching ideas that all English teachers should utilize.