TEX
Sights, Sites, and Reviews
This is S.E. Hinton, the author of TEX’s website. It includes personal information about Hinton, as well as contact information, a list of his novels, and comments from Hinton about each novel.
http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780440978503&view=tg
This website offers teachers ideas for teaching three S.E. Hinton books together and how to incorporate them into lessons with one another. The website gives pre-reading activites, thematic connections, and interdisciplinary connections teachers can use to teach TEX, Rumble Fish, and Taming the Star Runner.
http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/tex/funactivities.html
This website is actually designed for teachers to purchase lesson plans, but it includes some helpful ideas available without buying a lesson plan. If the lesson plan is purchased, teachers have access to twenty interactive class activities to use when teaching TEX, but there are five useful activities listed without buying the lesson plan. These five activities include writing a letter from one character to another character in the novel, beginning a sequel or epilogue to the novel, creating a book jacket, and creating a television talk show about the novel. These few activities could be very useful in a classroom that is reading this novel.
My View, My World
TEX was a novel that I found particularly interesting. The main character, Texas, or “Tex” had many relatable characteristics, but also experienced multiple atypical events throughout the novel. I really enjoyed Tex and his brother Mason’s relationship. I think that it was one that is relatable to almost all brothers and it had characteristics that I saw in my own two brothers’ relationship growing up. Even though the context was slightly different than what most brothers are dealing with, the protective nature and respect both Tex and Mason had for each other, as well as the arguments, were something present in all sibling relationships.
While I enjoyed the action in TEX, I found some of it to be a little unlikely and unrealistic. I am aware of the fact that drugs are present in the lives of some young adults, but I do not however, think that many readers of this novel will be able to relate to accompanying someone on a drug deal and getting shot. This definitely provided a climactic and dramatic event in the novel, but I just do not see it as a realistic occurrence.
The role Tex and Mason’s father plays in the novel is one that some fathers are certainly playing in their own children’s lives. Growing up, I had a friend whose father was not around and would occasionally make guest appearances into her life. I saw the toll that it took on her emotions as she felt unwanted and unloved by her father. Readers will be able to relate to Tex’s desire to be just like his father and to please him. Even though divorce is not present in this novel, individuals coming from families with divorced parents will most likely be able to relate to these feelings as well. Personally, I have never experienced this pain as my parents have been married for thirty-two years, but Hinton wrote TEX in a way that helped me to understand his pain and his need for love and acceptance from his father.
Overall, I think that TEX was the novel that was the most relatable. It wasn’t even that it was relatable because every reader had experienced the events Tex experienced, but it was more that S.E. Hinton wrote the novel in a way that conveyed emotion so deeply that readers could feel how what the characters felt. In turn, readers gain an understanding of Tex’s circumstances and are then able to more easily relate to individuals in their lives dealing with similar circumstances.
TWS
| In This UNIT
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| Knowledge Blocks pursued (what specific elements are you trying to teach here
| Methods you would apply?
| How will you “test” for understanding?
| What is the specific goal of this unit?
| OBJECTIVE
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| Align with Learning Goals and Instruction
| Family conflicts.
Social classes and their differences.
| Reflective writing on how students would cope with essentially living without parents and being raised by a brother.
Writing assignment on how differences in social classes can specifically be seen in today’s society.
Class discussion of the stereotypes that are associated with social classes.
| Essay test evaluating Tex’s personality and his way of coping as opposed to Mason’s personality and his coping mechanisms.
| Students will gain an understanding of specific social classes present in the United States. After learning stereotypes of these groups, students will learn to avoid those negative stereotypes and will better relate to others from diverse social and economic backgrounds.
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CA - 2 CA - 4 CA - 7 | |
| Clarity of Criteria and Standards for Performance? A rubric, pre-instruction, or post testing?
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Graded evaluation of participation and thought in class discussion. One-on-one meeting with student to evaluate reflective writing | Introduction to social statuses, identifying specifics. .
| The effect of an individual’s actions on another.
Small-town living in comparison to city living.
| Students will be confronted with lives that look different from their own, giving them an opportunity to gain respect and to relate to those different from themselves.
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CA - 2 CA - 7 | |
| What technical resources would you apply: (be specific) Web, graphic or writing programs, databases, research?
| Using a Word Processor, have students create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting Tex and Mason.
| Time in the computer lab to create Venn diagram.
| Show the motion picture TEX, and ask students to identify similarities and differences between the novel and the film.
| The Venn diagram will give concrete evidence of character differences and the film will give students a visual understanding of the novel.
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CA - 2 CA - 5 CA - 7 | |
