Jago Chapter 4

Yet another side note: I think my eye balls may have suffered irreversible damage due to the extreme cold this mourning. I might have the onset of cataracts, or worse, might start seeing dead people like the kid from the "6th Sense." If the following writing is nonsensical and full of paradox, you'll know why. (Because I am going blind from exposure.)

Chapter 4 is a very special chapter to me. For those of you who have Dr. Beare's 3010 class with me, you will understand 4's relevancy.I am not sure if anyone else has been wondering this, but I have been extremely confused about how it works when English teachers set up their units. As far as I knew with No Child Left Behind, we are essentially teaching to a testing standard. When looking at the Michigan Merit Curriculum, (which I assume is designed to incorporate ideas that will improve grades on the the Merit tests) its like a 40 page booklet that has topics like questions students should explore by certain grade levels. This only served to confuse me more. Luckily, I asked Alison Beare- my 3010 teacher, and she helped to clarify standards to me; one issue in particular that I was really confused about-that districts usually provide you with a list of books to teach.
Anyway, why this is important to me, and how it pertains to chapter 4, is that I really didn't understand why I was reading all these chapters on Praise Poems for example, if I was never really going to be able to freely teach what I wanted to. Noooow I understand that the merit curriculum is designed as a guideline, and how I meet those guidelines, like the question Who am I? could be obtained by creating a praise poem in class.
Strangely, Chapter 4 is all about writing standards for merit assessments. Particularly, I really enjoyed the section about using a quotation from the text to critically examine the work. For practice, I applied this method and picked a quote from one of my favorite books to use for critical application. Delightfully, it works. :)