"IT'S ALIVE!" Bringing Critical Thought to Life with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Victor was a learner. He had a passion for acquiring new information and using it to innovate and create. In Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, the title character, Victor Frankenstein, stated that “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn...” In the story, Victor exposed an unchecked curiosity for learning as well as his own tragic flaw. Although learning is generally a positive process, understanding how acquisition of valuable information goes together with personal and societal ethics is something that a learner must fully grasp when encountering content, if they intend to apply it successfully. Through critical thinking and discourse, fostered by student choice and individualized learning opportunities, students are able to think differently about a text and draw conclusions about its relevance to their current world.

The type of critical thinking required to comprehend and analyze encountered information and its connection to real life areas of advancement is an absolute necessity that ninth grade ELA students experience as they encounter Shelley’s text in Pre-AP/GT English courses at Eaton High School. These students explore, consider, and discuss the “moral liability” of “knowledge” and “progress” as a part of a problem based learning opportunity that allows for student choice while also facilitating real world connections to the text. As part of this project, students in ninth grade Pre-AP/GT English are presented with the driving question of “Does knowledge or progress ever become a moral liability?” They are asked to utilize resources and processes of their choosing to explore both sides of an area of advancement and then choose varied platforms and tools in which to communicate their findings in ways that answer that driving question. The findings are curated into a “Live Binder” that is shared with peers and other school and community members.

Students are given a wide variety of options for how to present up to date research in ways that not only answer the given problem but also present both sides or an issue and advocate for a perspective that has been developed through meticulous research and and discussion. Some students choose to use WeVideo or YouTube to help create and edit videos in the format of interviews or commercials, while others use similar tools to create podcasts or radio shows. Some prefer approaching their topics through graphic design with visual advertisements in Canva, or written argument in journal or blog entries using Blogger or Smore. Whatever the platform, a truly beneficial part of this experience comes in when a student is given the freedom to choose a tool or resource that they are confident in using and that communicates their voice effectively while helping to share their knowledge with the community around them.

As students develop argumentation, research, and independent communication skills throughout this project, they are able to display those over the course of a week set aside for formally sharing findings with the school community. While presenting their inventive and relevant creations, these students confidently defend their research and conclusions in a dissertation style setting, which is not only challenging but truly impressive to witness. It is in a forum such as this where it becomes apparent that our students are not only being given the freedom to explore content and required texts but they are also being provided opportunities to develop their own viewpoints on critical societal issues while shaping an ethical compass of their own, all while being able to connect it to their reading.

Victor Frankenstein also said, “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” However, what Victor was lacking was a true understanding of what to do with that information, which students in our freshman Pre-AP/GT English classes are acquiring and applying through research into their own opinions, in-depth analysis, and critical discourse. These invaluable learning experiences are things that will help to not only develop lifelong learners but also facilitate learning that encourages an approach to new discoveries with a critical eye and solid ethical grounding.

"Breaking out" and "Escaping" to Active Learning

Scenario: You are a student sitting in class, eyes glancing at the clock, counting the minutes to the bell, wanting to “escape”…Unless, you are in Rachelle Enax’s AVID classroom at Eaton High School where your only glances at the clock are in hopes for more time. Mrs. Enax’s students have already spent several class periods this school year wishing for more time to access information that will give them much needed clues for solving mysteries within educational breakout games. The escape room or breakout concept began in Japan in the early 2000’s with escape rooms created for entertainment purposes. As the trend grew, educators began to adopt this idea and evolve it into a type of classroom activity that empowers students to independently search for themed content needed to solve puzzles and unlock a series of clues, eventually “escaping” a fictional scenario.

Mrs. Enax elected to try this type of activity with her students after seeing the Breakout EDU resources available in the library media center. Breakout EDU resources allow teachers and students access to physical breakout boxes with already built clues and hints as well as completely digital breakouts that cover a variety of content areas. While completing their first “Back to School Boogie” breakout box activity, several of Enax’s students commented that they enjoyed the activity because “it allowed them to get information and learn things on their own and it was so different than what they usually do in school that it didn’t even feel like school.” After completing a second digital breakout, one student commented that “it was much better than someone lecturing us or just watching videos.” The student also appreciated that if there was something she already knew, she didn’t have to spend a lot of time on that and could move on to new information on her own. After the first couple of breakout experiences, Enax’s students have begged for additional breakout opportunities to help them study and discover concepts that are part of the AVID curriculum.

Several other EHS teachers are beginning create their own completely digital breakout games and try out the Breakout EDU resources available in the EHS library media center. Karri McGovern, an Eaton social studies teacher, noted that several of her students were complimentary of the digital breakout idea after working through an academic honesty scenario presented as an option for freshmen during PSAT testing. McGovern said that “Even the reluctant players bought into the game eventually. It took some of them a few minutes to start thinking the right way and find the first couple of clues, but once they did, they were engaged and determined to finish.” Students in Parween Noori’s freshman class stated that it was “fun to work together in a group to figure out the clues. You really had to look at the videos and articles closely to find the answers.”

This increasingly popular active approach to classroom instruction is part of a growing movement of educational strategies that puts responsibility for learning into the hands of the students, reversing traditional teacher-centered instructional strategies. These methods create more opportunities for engagement, collaboration, creativity, and excitement over the same content. The critical thinking and problem solving required of students in these scenarios tap into key academic and life skills needed while also exposing them to course content.

When reflecting back on the activities done in class so far, Mrs. Enax’s students credit their breakout experiences with improved team building and communication skills and they are excited to see what additional opportunities they will experience with future breakouts, maybe even getting to create their own.

Frankenstein Project Based Learning: It's ALIVE!

Students in Mrs. Day's English I GT class recently completed work on an amazing project based lesson over Mary Shelley's classic novel, Frankenstein.  According to the project instructions, students were tasked with creating a portfolio of artifacts that answered the driving question: Does knowledge or progress ever become a moral liability? Student groups chose their own area of scientific advancement to research, then explored the driving question from different perspectives and considered both the positive and negative effects of advancement. Based on their subject they created four products of their choosing to represent their findings and related them to the themes found in Frankenstein and how they apply to the world today.

The group of Michael, Matthew, Marcos, and Jonathan chose to do their project on robots and the future of artificial intelligence. "This project was fun because we got to put our own spin on it, both by choosing our own products and in how we did the presentation, which we did as a skit," said Michael. Jonathan elaborated that they "appreciated the product list Mrs. Day gave us because we got to choose what digital tools to use in order to more efficiently represent our topic." This way, students not only got to choose the topic themselves, but they also chose what tools to use. This allowed them to represent their thoughts on the subjects they chose as they related them to the lessons in the book. Michael explained that their research gave them a different "perspective on whether people should do things rather than if they could do things."

The group started by using a Google Doc to plan out the project, including their subject, research, pros/cons of the subject, links to resources and products, and even a script for their presentation. They decided to use a Google Slides presentation to present their portfolio of artifacts, which can be seen here:

The group used multiple tools to create their products.  For example, Matthew used Lucidpress to create their preparing for a Robot Uprising pamphlet "because it had lots of built-in design options for making pamphlets."  They used Imgur to create a Wanted poster for a rogue robot.  Marcos said the ability to choose their own tools, like Canva, and create their own products was very helpful.  He explained that it "gave us ideas how to connect things back to the book.  I chose the Survivor Shopping List because I thought that people would need to know what they'd need to survive, similar to what Frankenstein needed."

Check out the presentation above to see all the products as they were presented, which was in the form of an interactive skit.  The ability of these students to choose their route of learning was evident in every step of this project, and is represented in the quality of their products.  "I love the way these students draw comparisons between a novel from 1818 and modern day technology," said Mrs. Day. "These students prove that literature and the lessons it teaches are always relevant."