Thomas Guides

I remember my uncle's old Ford Taurus, baby blue, I think it was. It was a little, 2 door jewel that always toted the trusty, faded Thomas Guide in the backseat. My uncle would thumb through that massive book with licked fingers (gross) to the point where the pages becomes soft and pliable. I too would lean over and take a look at it, not understanding a thing I saw.


Sometimes, I feel exactly the same way when I'm lesson planning. My final destination is to drive my highly unmotivated, apathetic students into writing 5 paragraph essays that prove a strong opinion about a character through textual evidence. I'm lost by the first light.


Therefore, I experiment. I get lost, over and over again, till I get vaguely familiar with the landscape of failure. Ultimately, I get an instinctual sense to avoid it. Well, eventually. Hopefully?


So the planned route to essay writing is as following:


1. Criteria Chart

• In groups of 4, students decide on 5 traits a person must possess to be labeled as being good.
• Oddly enough, being funny came up quite frequently. When I tried to get them to think and asked them if being boring makes someone bad, many of them honestly answered, "Yes".
• Students will use this chart to judge the main character and develop a thesis

2. Color time!

• So that students are tricked into finding textual evidence, I have them highlight parts of the story where the main character acts in noble ways and underline in red, parts where the character makes his follies. It's my take on the angel and devil on each shoulder.

3. Class Debate

• Ok, they now have the basis for a thesis and have found their quotes, but the hardest part is realizing that someone might have a different viewpoint. Debate time!
• Class is divided in half and one side argues that the character is an overall good man while the other argues that he is not, using quotes from the story as their evidence.
• Each person must stand and give his/her case, and in order to not get disqualified to win the grand prize of small jolly ranchers.

Tomorrow's the class debate...I'm scared.