Scott Filkins

Scott Filkins is a literacy coach at Central High School in Champaign, Illinois. He taught high school English for nine years, serving as English Department Chair for seven years and teaching a range of courses, including Advanced Placement Literature, an interdisciplinary American Studies course, and inclusive 9th grade English.

Scott worked as a Content Specialist for ReadWriteThink at NCTE for two years and was part of the secondary strand of NCTE’s Reading Initiative from 1999 to 2001. He is a contributing editor for the NCTE INBOX blog and a community leader in the NCTE Pathways for Advancing Adolescent Literacy.

His professional interests include engaging at-risk learners in school-based literacy practices and developing effective models of support for secondary literacy teachers. He currently serves on the steering committee for the University of Illinois Writing Project site.

Lessons on ReadWriteThink

Brave New Words:  Novice Lexicography and the Oxford English Dictionary (9-12)
Students will become novice lexicographers as they explore recent new entries to the dictionary, learn the process of writing entries for the Oxford English Dictionary, and write a new entry themselves.

Choose, Select, Opt, or Settle: Exploring Word Choice in Poetry (9-12)
Students use an online tool to investigate the effects of word choice in Robert Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star.” The results of the investigation allow them to construct a more sophisticated understanding of speaker, subject, and tone.

Exploring Setting: Constructing Character, Point of View, Atmosphere, and Theme (9-12)
This lesson uses canonical and non-canonical texts by Dybek, Dickens, Poe, and Morrison to help students understand how authors use language to create setting and, in turn, how setting constructs other elements in a literary work. The lesson offers extension opportunities through formal essays, film reviews, and poetry analysis.

Having My Say: A Multigenre Autobiography Project (9-12)
Students will read Having Our Say, the autobiography of two African-American women who lived through most of the twentieth century.  Using this text as a model, students will produce a multigenre project that includes an autobiographical essay and an informational piece that provides historical, familial, or cultural context for their story.

If a Body Texts a Body: Texting in The Catcher in the Rye (9-12)
Students imagine the possibilities afforded by text messaging technology in The Catcher in the Rye.  They compare and contrast major forms of communication, select points in the novel to represent with text messages, and share and discuss their creative work.

Preparing for the Journey: An Introduction to the Hero Myth  (9-12)
In this lesson that prepares them to read or view a larger hero myth narrative, students read a variety of picture books that contain elements of the hero’s journey and use an online interactive tool to analyze the stories.

There Are No Small Parts: Minor Characters in David Copperfield (9-12)
After students read David Copperfield, they begin the lesson by reviewing all the characters and sorting them into major and minor characters.  Small groups choose a minor character for whom they will develop a “back story” that includes information not present in the text.  They share their creative thinking in the form of an online social networking profile for the selected character.

Young Adult Literature about the Middle East: A Cultural Response Perspective (6-8)
Adapted from Sheryl L. Finkle and Tamara J. Lilly’s Middle Ground: Exploring Selected Literature from and about the Middle East, this variation on traditional literature circles exposes students to a variety of young adult fiction from and about the Middle East. Students read and share researcha and responses in collaborative groups. At the end of the lesson, they write a letter to welcome an immigrant student to their school and community.