Textual Play: The Rigor of Messing Around

USC Family of Schools Symposium Presentation 

12/13/2014 Saturday

How can alternative, non print responses encourage and deepen thinking?  Use symbolic representation, tableaus, even doodling--to elicit complex intellectual participation across grade-levels and abilities-- from EL learners to AP students. Using a Dickensian text as a starting point, the session will look at how the concept of "play" brings simultaneity and complexity in a community of learners.  Instead of linear and bounded lists of comprehensive skills, this concept experiments with categories of thought: finding pattern, antithesis, contiguity/comparison and shift. This concept diversifies how students can show us what they know, in simple, spontaneous ways to ambitious collaborative projects and partnerships.

Jacqueline Barrios is a twelve year  National  Board Certified English teacher at  USC NAI and Foshay Learning Center, having taught each grade level from 7th  Sheltered English to seniors in AP English Literature.  She is the founder and co-director of the Theater Workshop, a literature-based student performing arts program that mounts full-length productions based on canonical texts of study in the AP and pre-AP classroom, including Austen, Moliere and Shakespeare.  She regularly creates literature-based projects and collaborations based on partnerships in school and with USC, Dickens Project, Shakespeare Institute at the Huntington, Contra Tiempo and other arts and educational institutions and organizations. She holds an MA in Education and English Literature.