Teacher´s Guide to Interpretation

1. Didictic and Methodical Considerations

The first-person narrator, fifteen-year-old Frankie Pierson, relates her personal experiences and those events of the last year leading up to her mother's mysterious disappearance and her own struggle in chronological order. Both, this linear, chronological progression and the lucid organization of the subject matters in this novel (3 parts and 26 chapters) give the teacher the chance to arrange its study at school into thematic units.

The number of chapters dealt with in each unit varies according to the quantity and weightiness of the subjects that are to be discussed. As a rule, these thematic units are introduced by a succinct interpretation, or by introductory, respectively background information that are supposed to contribute to a more profound insight into those specific problems dealt with in the novel. The "Teaching Suggestions" which follow each interpretation or introductory information provide a variety of different teaching and learning methods such as pair/group work and individual assignments, blackboard sketches or diagrams, stimuli for discussion in class, research work on the internet, and finally a number of home assignments. The "Teaching Suggestions" are meant merely as a guideline enabling the teacher to make her/his personal selection, for the decision as to which priorities are to be set, or how many lessons are needed for each unit, depends on the abilities, interests, and the age of the students and is therefore ultimately left to the teacher her/himself.
As J.C. Oates´ Freaky Green Eyes is a suitable school reader for both junior and senior students, the assignments offered in the "Teaching Suggestions" vary in their level of difficulty.

Freaky Green Eyes, Teacher`s Guide to Interpretation

ITEMS

1. Didactic and Methodical Considerations

2. Sample