Addicted to Dickens

At yesterday's DATE Conference, held at SUNY Cortland, I became so excited with so many new ideas I could bring into my future classroom. I will share with you some of these ideas, for perhaps I can inspire others with what I learned.

The first idea: Addicted to Dickens: using the internet to teach the novels of Charles Dickens in weekly installment, just like it was initially published. This program is developed by Georgia Peach at Skaneateles High School.

http://dickens.stanford.edu/archive/tale/two_cities.html

Using the above website, students read A Tale of Two Cities online over the course of a year. As you can see, this website includes downloads for each chapter and additional information about the book. Students read a chapter or two (depending on length) once a week, when the teacher posts the chapters on the class website, and the class has discussions and writing assignments on the assigned reading. To see how this would actually pan out in an actual classroom, here is Mrs. Peach's website:

http://www.scs.cnyric.org/ataleoftwocities.htm

This program is great because students can read Dickens like his readers did during the 1800s! Also, they are reading from an online source, one that they are already using like crazy, so this motivates them to do the reading assignment. In other classes, one problem we have been discussing is the issue that some classrooms do not have enough copies of books for students to take them home to read. This program would solve that issue, for they just use a computer to do the reading homework! They can read anywhere, anytime, as long as they have a computer nearby. Students don't have to worry about bringing their text with them, for they can interact with their monitors to do active reading.

In addition, a course blog could open up to discuss these weekly installments. The teacher should post a weekly question, and students could comment from this (if they need direction) or they could post on a topic of their own. Then, students could comment off of each other's comments, creating a massive network of communication about Charles Dickens.

This program absolutely intrigues me. Perhaps it is because I am halfway through Great Expectations right now, which is absolutely breath taking, but I had fears about teaching such a dense book to students. However, I could see myself teaching Dickens in this way. Others ways, I think, would be extremely difficult.

You could adapt this program to other works of Dickens, or you could adapt this to Alexandre Dumas, for he published his works in a similar weekly fashion. I would love to do The Three Musketeers in this format, for that is another lengthy, but thrilling, book that was published weekly. I hope I serve as some Dickens inspiration.