No Man's Land - An Essay on Home for All Quiet on the Western Front
"I repeat to myself the name of the street that we cross over--Bremerstrasse--Bremerstrasse."
No Man's Land - An Essay on Home for All Quiet on the Western Front: A very early essay in my career - in fact, it was modeled on the one I had to do for my college class (where All Quiet was assigned).
Lesson Overview
No Man's Land - An Essay on Home for All Quiet on the Western Front. A very early essay in my career - in fact, it was modeled on the one I had to do for my college class (where All Quiet was assigned). In addition to the prompt (see below), I give the students some tips and additional instructions. There is also an extra credit essay on comparing the book to the 1930 movie of the novel. The reasons for there not being more essays is quite simple: The movie questions started becoming more and more like mini-essays and the students were already doing a lot of writing on the book. 2) There was also an Illuminated Text Project (first) and a General Creative Response Project (second) that took up a lot of the students time and gave them a chance to respond to All Quiet on the Western Front.
Here is the main prompt (also found below in the handout).
The importance and location of home is continually discussed in E.M. Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. The "idea" of just where and what home is, changes as the novel's central character, Paul, becomes more and more battle weary. You are to write a 2-4 page essay which describes Paul's view of home (how it changes, how it is significant) throughout the novel. Don't be afraid to include the other soldiers' views of home as well.
Handout (All Quiet Essay)
Remote Enhancements
Essays can be ideal for Remote Learning. Hopefully you can trust your students - if not there are always electonic checks. Or have them hand write it and scan it in... :)
Harmony of War - An All Quiet Creative Response Project: Though this is under "What's Next" it should really be "What's Instead". The creative response is an alternative to the essay - especially because of the Movie Questions (lots of miniessays). Originally done as an exclusive Illuminated Text project - I expanded it to include any kind of creative response. The one requirement was that it had to be thoughtful - like the book - and it had to take a fair amount of effort. Students had over the two week holiday break to supplement their time - and because they could choose the medium that they worked in - I hope it allowed them to do what they liked - what they enjoyed - as a specific response to what we had just read (and the works just before that as well - going all the way back to Candide (where the title of the assignment comes from) and especially All Quiet and The Things They Carried.
WHAT CAME BEFORE:
Thoughts on the Lesson
I really found the Movie Questions started to supplant the longer essays that I used to assign. If designed well - the students can really get a lot of practice with movie questions in synthesizing and articulating all the text that they've been working in on for a unit.