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Illuminated Texts Handouts
These are handouts that are related to creating Illuminated Texts. Some are for specific books or works, while others are general in nature. Most of them are geared towards Microsoft's Power Point, while the newer ones include or are aimed at creating Illuminated Texts using Adobe Flash.
Song of Solomon - Illuminated Text Exercise - A Sense of Where You Are
This is the handout for The Song of Solomon illuminated text excercise and it differs from other such assignments as the students are given a wider range of choices: they may create a traditional illuminated text (as seen throughout this website) or they may illustrate one of the historical backdrops (such as the sitins at lunch counters) that are brought up thoughtout this novel. It's funny but after students see what others have been doing with the text of the book -- very few if any opt for the historial presentations. It must also be said that Song of Solomon is so well written with so many textual layers that it truly lends itself to the creation of Illuminated Texts.
A Rubric for Illuminated Texts
What follows is a teacher submitted lesson - a rubric on Illuminated Texts. Wow! This is one of the most asked for handouts on this web site and I'm so thankful to the author. It seems to really cover all of the bases and gives the students some great feed-back on what they did as well as why they received the grade that they did. Outstanding in every way. JRS
The War Prayer - An Illuminated Text Project
A project for using Illuminated Texts to explicate Mark Twain's long poem, "The War Prayer." The assignment divides the poem into sections so that various part can be done by different students -- without replication. The teacher can then choose to show the parts of the poem in order to create a "larger" effect. This particular incarnation of the project has students (to great effect it turned out) utilize the Library of Congress's American Memory project to obtain their images and sounds. After assigning this for a number of years it has been poss
The Well Tempered Illuminated Text - Power Point Edition
This handout is designed to save hours and hours of frustration - both on the part of the student on for the teacher. Power Point has some quirky "bugs" especially when it comes to getting sound to play correctly. This handout does not cover the basics (like making sure to have the sound start automatically and to choose play for 99 slides in effect options) - but it does cover some of the nondocumented aspect of Power Point (when it comes to writing Ill
Learning in a Flash: A Handout for getting started with Adobe Flash - especially for Illuminated Texts
This year I have started allowing my students to create their Illuminated Texts using Adobe Flash in addition to Microsoft Power Point. Initially the students were reluctant. Most of the students already knew how to use Power Point and did not know how to program in Flash. Because I made the use optional a few students started on it at a time and when new students wanted to learn there were others that could help them. Towards the end of the year I gave a class (after school) for anyone that was interested in learning how to create an Illuminated Text using Flash. The class lasted about an hour and the room that I gave it in was packed. Below you will find the handout for that class as well as two flash (in the form of .fla) files that I used for the demo. The class didn't go into depth, but was enough to get students interested and to wet their feet so they could see more information from the excellent help files and tutorials.
The Illuminated Sonnet - A Final Handout
Below you will find a link for a final handout filled with tips -- a checklist and much much more -- for the The Illuminated Sonnet portion of the research paper. The file is rather large so you will have to be patient with its downloading. The checklist that I created for this assignment literaly saved me hours of post-turned-in work. There is so much for students to consider when creating Illluminated Texts that they often forget the most fundamental technical details.
Illuminated Research - Shakespeare's Sonnets & Doing Research
This assignment is designed to have students learn research methods using Shakespeare's Sonnets as their focus. It is also designed to be worked on in teams, though each student will ultimately write their own paper (either on the sonnet or on an aspect of that sonnet). How much they work together is up to them -but going to the library, throwing ideas off of each other, as well as editing each other's papers are some of the possible benefits. The partners will also produce an Illuminated Text (in this case it should be very informed) on their sonnet.
Start with the Words: An Illuminated Text Worksheet
Giving students time to work on Illuminated Texts in the classroom can be problematic. If you go to the lab (and only do it for one day) - the amount of work that will actually get done may be small. However - I recently created this worksheet to give students a solid beginning in the Illuminated Text creating business. It asks students to first identify the desirable aspects of Illuminated Texts that they have seen in the past and liked - it then tries to get them to think of those aspects - in advance - for their own presentations.
Seeking and Finding - The Illuminated Candide
A handout on how to and what to do for a Candide, Illuminated Text. The students are given the focus of Candide's search and the handout assumes some familiarity with the Illuminated Text procedure. If you are looking for a introductory handout you should consult within The House on Mango Street section or the Renaissance section of this website. These are of course written in Microsoft Word which allows you to adapt them to your own needs and texts.
Help with Audacity (Sound Editor)
Many thanks to Jennifer Cheung who took the time to put together four very helpful pictures (complete with annotations) for those that are having trouble using Audacity (the open source sound-editing program). The pictures (topics) include 1) Finding the LAME (mp3) encoder 2) Selecting a sound clip 3) Pasting a sound clip 4) Exporting your mp3 file. The instructions are clear and demonstrative -- so
A Sense of Who You Are:Theme in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
This is the handout for an Illuminated Text focusing on Theme and Motifs with in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Students pick one theme from the novel and through Illuminated Texting they paint a portrait of that theme. It's great because there are so many possibilities of themes and variations of the themes that each student's work is completely original. They can also do cool things with music to enhance the mood of their work.
Harmony of War - An Illuminated Text handout and signup sheet for All Quiet on the Western Front
There are two handouts here. The first one is for students who will do an illuminated text of All Quiet on the Western Front. This project is different than most of the Illuminated Texts on this site, as it gives students a choice of four different types of presentations:1) an illuminated text based only on quotes from Remarque's novel 2) one based a song about war, but beginning with a quote from the book 3) An Illuminated Text of part of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" 4) and finally an illuminated text based on the 1914 Christmas Truce (during World War I). There is also an optional sign up sheet -- in case the teacher wishes to have a diversity of projects.
I Want: An Illuminated Text of Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain"
This is an illuminated text by Luis Barragan and Annmarie Rey. It is from the story "A Cat in the Rain," from Hemingway's In Our Time. It focuses on the fact that the Wife in the story is not very much loved or paid attention to by the Husband. She tries to say she wants a cat in order to really say she wants everything else that she really needs. The illuminated text has an animation all the way through. That is a first. [And that animation all the way through is wonderfully cinematic - as the story progresses with words, the cat saunders down and across the screen - truly wonderful. JRS]
Illuminating the Scarlet Letter
This was my first experience with using illuminated texts in the classroom. The results were mixed, but overall I believe that students really were able to connect to the text and draw out good quotations to use. I gave students 5 class periods to work on the assignment. Because it was their first time using advanced features of PowerPoint, there was a bit of a learning curve - especially with the music.
