Tag Archives: All Quiet on the Western Front

Abiding wonder of reaching out

Since retiring, I have been doing a little tutoring to help make ends meet. It has been interesting, surprising sometimes, to see how academic work assigned in a class gets translated through the eyes of a particular student. Having been … Continue reading

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And more All Quiet creative projects

At the end of our reading of All Quiet on the Western Front, I ask my 8th graders to produce a creative response to the book. This can take any form: a play, a poem, an image, a piece of music. Today … Continue reading

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Under the spell of All Quiet

We are presently reading All Quiet on the Western Front. A student shared with me that he and some of his friends have adopted some of the characters in the book, have become one of the characters in their group … Continue reading

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Powerful closures

The students presented their creative projects for All Quiet on the Western Front today. There was the annual absurdly funny video of the book by a few of the boys, a collection of poems about the war from all the countries involved … Continue reading

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This is really hard to do

We’re in the midst of All Quiet on the Western Front now. I have assigned groups of students a different group of chapters. Each group is responsible to give and grade a reading quiz, and to prepare vocabulary, pertinent quotes, … Continue reading

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Creative Responses to All Quiet

In response to their reading of All Quiet on the Western Front, my students created poetry, diary entries which contrasted with letters home, did drawings, a hooked rug (see below).  One student destroyed a copy of All Quiet, filling a … Continue reading

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Dear General Shinseki

We have finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front and our last conversation in class about the book became a passionate discussion about how war seems to be such an absurd way of settling conflicts, especially in light of … Continue reading

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Navigating the space between child and adult

As a way to discuss our way through All Quiet on the Western Front, I have assigned different groups of students to prepare vocabulary, factual questions for a quiz (which each group will grade), and interpretive questions to discuss for each … Continue reading

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Public pooping

In my afternoon class today, we spent about a half an hour talking about pooping and not just pooping privately, but, in fact, pooping with one’s friends. We have just begun All Quiet on the Western Front and in the … Continue reading

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All Quiet creative projects

We snuck into an empty music storage room where there was a piano so JG could play us the piece he had composed for the ending to All Quiet on the Western Front. He had gone halfway through it before … Continue reading

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